On 11/14/2012 8:23 AM, Endi Sukma Dewata wrote: > The messages in ProfileList.template in CA EE has been extracted > into a properties file which can be translated separately. > > The original messages in the template have been marked as follows: > <span class="message" name="...key...">...message...</span> > > When the page is loaded into the browser, the original message will > be replaced with the translated message. > > Ticket #406 Just to clarify, this patch demonstrates how message customization could be done. A full solution will require many incremental patches due to the number of messages to be customized. Here is how it works. Previously a theme consist of HTML/Velocity templates, JS files, images and CSS files. The HTML/Velocity templates contain HTML code, JS code, paths to images/CSS files, and text messages. To create a custom theme we had to clone the default Dogtag theme, then customize the files as needed. Most of the time we'll only be changing the images, CSS, and messages, but we still have to duplicate everything in the theme. This becomes a maintenance issue because if we change anything in the default theme, the custom theme will not be updated automatically, and it could be hard to merge the changes. Recently we've been moving the templates and JS files out of the theme packages into the core packages because they are less likely to be changed, leaving just the images and CSS files in the theme. However, the messages are still part of the templates. To support customization we need to separate the messages from the templates. JQuery and jquery-i18n-properties are tools that we can use to load custom messages from a separate properties file and then replace the original messages in the template. Suppose we have a template which contains the following HTML code: <tr> <td>Dogtag</td> <td> The Dogtag Certificate System is an enterprise-class open source Certificate Authority. </td> </tr> To make the messages customizable we need to mark them. Here we are using a <span> which shouldn't be visible in the browser: <tr> <td> <span class="message" name="title">Dogtag</span> </td> <td> <span class="message" name="description">The Dogtag Certificate System is an enterprise-class open source Certificate Authority.</span> </td> </tr> The <span> element is assigned a class "message" which will be used to locate all messages. The element is also assigned a name which will be used as message key. The original message itself is left intact within the <span> to help visualize the page. Then we create a Messages.properties that maps the message keys to the actual messages: title = Dogtag description = The Dogtag Certificate System is an enterprise-class\ open source Certificate Authority. The messages in the properties file can be customized as needed. Then we'll use the tools to load the custom messages and replace the original messages in the template: $.i18n.properties({ name: 'Messages', ... callback: function() { var key; for (key in $.i18n.map) { var message = $.i18n.prop(key); $('span.message[name='+key+']').html(message); } } }); After the browser finishes loading the page the $.i18n.properties() will run to load the custom messages from Messages.properties. Once they are loaded the callback() will run to replace all marked messages with the custom messages. There are 2 different purposes for message customization which require different strategies: branding and translation. If we're doing branding only, like the current implementation, we need to use separate properties for each theme, for example: Messages.properties - Dogtag theme Messages.properties - Other theme If we're doing translation only we need to use separate properties file for each language, for example: Messages.properties - Dogtag theme in English Messages_es.properties - Dogtag theme in Spanish Messages_fr.properties - Dogtag theme in French If we're doing both branding and translation the number of files will be multiplied: Messages.properties - Dogtag theme in English Messages_es.properties - Dogtag theme in Spanish Messages_fr.properties - Dogtag theme in French Messages.properties - Other theme in English Messages_es.properties - Other theme in Spanish Messages_fr.properties - Other theme in French One possible solution is to do the translation and branding separately using different message markers: <tr> <td> <span class="product" name="title">Dogtag</span> </td> <td> <span class="message" name="description">The <span class="product" name="long_title">Dogtag Certificate System</span> is an enterprise-class open source Certificate Authority.</span> </td> </tr> Here we can load the translated "message" first, then load the untranslated "product" after that. This solution doesn't require as many properties files: Messages.properties - English messages Messages_es.properties - Spanish messages Messages_fr.properties - French messages Product.properties - Dogtag theme Product.properties - Other theme If we can assume the messages are fixed, we can actually include the messages in the core packages and leave the branding in the theme packages. We could also stack the theme files, similar to the sections in the configuration file, so the custom theme only needs to store the files that are different from the default theme. This will require the ability to install multiple themes and deploy the custom theme on top of the default theme.