Hello, World!, or καλημέρα κόσμε!
The latest work on Simplish tried to scratch out the last un-gettext’d strings in the theme and finally generate a localization template (.pot file). The internationalization infrastructure is now in place, and Simplish is ready for translation into your language.
2.1.7 ships with a Greek (el) localization provided by Demetris from op111.net. To activate a translated version of the theme, follow these instructions to set your WPLANG and make WordPress run in your locale. If a .mo file for the locale exists in the simplish/languages subdirectory (true only for el right now), the theme will load it.
Download
Download Simplish version 2.1.7 here, or see it soon in the WordPress themes directory.
Adding your own language to Simplish
To translate Simplish into your language, use the included languages/simplish.pot template to generate a .po file with the letter-encoding for your locale (e.g., fr_FR for the “French, France” locale). Then provide a translation for each string, saving the resulting .po and .mo files in the theme's languages subdirectory.
You can place a pointer to your translated .po file in the comments for inclusion in future versions of Simplish, or send them or a pointer via email. Given demand, we'll add features to the git repo available at git://labs.utopian.net/simplish to make for easier collaboration, but for now, git-format patches to add your translation will certainly be warmly received.
Farewell, valid Galleries
Unlike earlier versions, 2.1.7 uses the built-in WordPress gallery shortcode function instead of a custom version. This enables the settings for number of columns and other layout options that previously didn't work with the custom gallery implementation. Unfortunately, unlike the former sp_vallery() function in Simplish, the core WordPress gallery does not emit valid XHTML.
We expect WordPress's gallery shortcode will be changed to create valid XHTML at some point. Until then, any page/post including an image gallery will be invalid markup, unless a plugin or other workaround is used. The Cleaner Gallery plugin by Justin Tadlock has worked well for us.
Changes in version 2.1.7
- Move most view-bottom prev/next navigation out to an included template,
prevnextnav.php.
- Delete the
sp_vallery() function & don't filter WP core's gallery shortcode.
- Wrap user-visible strings with gettext
_e() and __() macros.
- Change post byline to use a dash (
-) to avoid issue with context of "at" in multiple languages, in absence of support in themes for gettext "contexts".
- Stop using CSS
text-transform: uppercase in archive headings to avoid issue with accented characters in uppercase in many non-English languages.
- Add
languages/ subdirectory and code to get locale files from there.
- Generate gettext
.pot translatable strings template.
- Add
el.^(po mo) localization files for Greek locale. Thanks Demetris at op111.net.
Simplish Mailing List
We created a Simplish mailing list/Google Group tonight, to help make developing, translating, or reporting issues with Simplish a little easier. We’ve largely conducted that with blog comments here (which are still quite welcome) & individual emails, but as a few more people outside utopian.net contribute to the theme, this should let us more conveniently keep in sync.
We realize the list will be of use and interest mostly to developers, translators, and bug-reporters, so we will of course continue to announce new features, any problems, and new versions of the theme here on the blog.
This is significant in another way, because we usually host our own services, including lists, but I was feeling both lazy and experimental enough to take advantage of an external service for this, for now. We’ll see how it goes.
You can join by sending mail to simplish+subscribe@googlegroups.com, or by visiting the web interface for a more forum-like experience at http://groups.google.com/group/simplish.