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.

• Trackback URI and Comments: combine display into a single element.
• Don’t display Category in post meta box for Uncategorized posts.
• Fix empty li element by displaying nothing on posts without tags. (Thanks Tim Hamilton.)
• Display dates on posts and comments now honor date format settings in wp-admin -> Settings -> General. (Thanks demetris from op111.net.)
• Remove header_shadow.gif. Alignment changes by a few pixels; the blog title underline is now a CSS border, not an image.
• Fix bug in sp_vallery() gallery shortcode override to handle links and HTML in gallery image captions.
• Fix bug in sp_vallery() that created extra empty gallery div. (See this issue in upstream Sandbox code.)
• Standardize and simplify use of text symbols:
  • [ ] (logged-in user UI elements)
  • | (element separation)
  • - (title element separation)
  • « » (chronological traversal)
• Adopt rel=home in header and footer links to blog’s home page.
• Replace all remaining comments_popup_link() calls with comments_link()/comments_number().
• Don’t show post counts in default sidebar’s Archives and Categories lists.
• A little more prep for gettext internationalization.
• CSS cleanups and simplifications for some double-definitions. (Thanks threesomehour.com.)
• PHP code cleanups.
• (Continued) Re-verification of posts and page templates for hAtom/hCard and XHMTL/CSS validity.

Download 2.1 right here, or see it soon in the WordPress themes directory.

In the end, op111′s demetris chose to apply his own styling to Scott Wallick‘s excellent Sandbox theme. I came close to doing the same thing when I went looking for a snazzy ‘default’-kinda theme for Utopian.net’s use – and for my own blog at the Labs. I decided to adopt and update Kenny/Jeffrey‘s ScribbishWP, but since I started changing and departing from both ScribbishWP (in code) and Scribbish itself (in style), the plaintxt.org themes like Sandbox and blog.txt have inspired choices for Simplish. We even copy their code: the two basic hCard producer functions used in Simplish 2.0 are derived from blog.txt source (closely enough that Scott’s copyright has joined the NOTICE.)

op111′s list has some references to the many uses folks make of the Sandbox plus some chameleon CSS – Sandbox comes out of the box looking like 1995, but can be made into anything you can tweak into and copy out of Firebug. My favorite is still Sandbox co-creator Andy Skelton’s re-implementation of WordPress’s default/kubrick theme atop Sandbox.