Simultaneous multilingualism

[Lydia]

Hello,

I wish to blog in two languages (English and French), and I'm currently looking around to find a software solution.

I've been trying Serendipity with the multilingual plugin, and find it very interesting (I mean both Serendipity and the plugin of course ), however, it doesn't do exactly what I'm looking for (yet?)

Here's the catch: I'd like to display both languages for each entry, at the same time on the page (either the front page, individual entries, etc.) each in their own column, side by side (there's a slight language teaching dimension to the whole story, and I find this easier for comparisons between the languages).

So I guess my question is: is there any way to achieve that with the multilingual plugin? (or any other method for that matter: for instance, I'm considering Expression Engine and its very flexible custom fields sets feature, where I would create entry fields for each languages, and 'call' them accordingly in the templates) [/i]

[wesley]

I'd imagine it could somehow be implemented by modifying the current
multilingual plugin. The current version checks the language and fetches
the correct language content from the database, replacing the 'default'
language content. Instead of replacing, it could 'append'. Then add a
couple of rudimentary table functions to make them show side by side.

[garvinhicking]

In fact, you can do it with Serendipity just like how you would do it with ExpressionEngine.

All languages apart from the "default" one are stored in the "properties" array of your entry.

Now you can edit your entries.tpl Template and look where the Body is shown:

Code: Select all

            <div class="serendipity_entry_body">
                {$entry.body}
            </div>

Now you could enhance it like that:

Code: Select all

            <div class="serendipity_entry_body">
                {$entry.body}
            </div>

            <div class="serendipity_entry_body_french">
                {$entry.properties.multilingual_body_fr}
            </div>

            <div class="serendipity_entry_body_german">
                {$entry.properties.multilingual_body_de}
            </div>

Of course, an alternate approach is what wesley pointed out. That would be less flexible in terms of templating, but easier in terms of you NOT having to mess with templating.

Regards,
Garvin