Add Internationalisation to more apps

[gfwilliams]

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CLOSED - please see #1311 for up to date info on what needs doing

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We now have a great 'locale' module for handling language-specific units in apps - but virtually nothing uses it right now. We should have a push to add it to as many apps as possible - and also to document how to use it.

[MaBecker]

Just started writing a conversation with title

What does the Languages app and how can it be used in apps

[gfwilliams]

... which is at http://forum.espruino.com/conversations/345155

[MaBecker]

just updated it and changed locales to locale

[MaBecker]

Looks like there is no meridian function that returns a value from ampm

I guess that will do:

 meridian: d => (d.getHours() <= 12) ? locale.ampm[0]:locale.ampm[1],

just posted pr #145

[stephenrjohnson]

I'm just wondering we have access to the GPS so would it be worth on first start when we get the time, getting the country and from that guessing the timezone. Not really locale related but we can prompt the user input on changing this if they wish.

[gfwilliams]

I think the Web Browser itself would have a much better idea of locale than we could get from GPS. But that's a good thought - we could try and figure out what the locale was and pre-select it from the list

[stephenrjohnson]

There are two things, one is the locale which I suppose we could guess from the web browser settings (good idea). The other is the timezone, that is more location based. The locale and timezone don't really relate at all, just because your in the UK doesn't mean you want the language to be English. I'm more on about the timezone here (sorry for not being clear), as when the user switches on the device for the first time we set the clock using the GPS, but we could also get a long / lat from that guess the country and from that guess the timezone for this.
We would need to add the timezone.db and have a system that gets s country from a long / lat, it's just an idea not sure if you want me to have a crack at it. This would be good when travelling as to set your watch to the correct timezone you just select the menu item (update timezone etc).

[gfwilliams]

Well, the timezone can also be got from the browser too - and is already: https://github.com/espruino/BangleApps/blob/master/js/comms.js#L87

And when using Gadgetbridge it should be updated automatically too.

So really this would just be for the case where someone went to a new country, without a phone/pc, and didn't want to set the timezone manually. I'm not sure it warrants adding a potentially quite large database of timezones to every watch (it'd have to know the actual borders, for instance https://www.timeanddate.com/time/map/)

But if you were interested in doing it, adding that functionality to the 'GPS Time' app which allows the time to be got from the GPS would be extremely cool.

[stephenrjohnson]

The reason is I've got an iphone so can't use the Gadgetbridge app, I'll have a look see if it's feasible, seems doable thanks to https://github.com/evansiroky/node-geo-tz/ or https://github.com/mapbox/timespace or my bet https://github.com/darkskyapp/tz-lookup/ with https://github.com/prantlf/timezone-support.

[gfwilliams]

Docs are now here: https://www.espruino.com/Bangle.js+Locale

[paulcockrell]

Could we not allow developers to specify their own locale file for their app in apps.json, this would be looked up first, then falls back to standard global locale. I think for more non standard text heavy apps relying on a global locale isn't feasible

[gfwilliams]

Yeah, I guess the solution is to have the locale stored in the App Loader at a minimum, and then other apps can grab that info and do what they want with it?

My concern is that realistically only an extremely small selection of apps are going to have translations. I don't think the majority of contributors are going to put in the effort (or have the language skills to reliably translate to different languages).

One option is to have /*LANG*/ by language strings as done in https://github.com/espruino/BangleApps/pull/202/files - then maybe the App Loader could look up in a global table or even Google Translate the relevant strings

[srl295]

Hi! I work on ICU and also CLDR. I'd like to look at how the locale.js module can be updated automatically instead of maintained by hand.

My concern is that realistically only an extremely small selection of apps are going to have translations. I don't think the majority of contributors are going to put in the effort (or have the language skills to reliably translate to different languages).

This is a good reason to keep the translations separate from the source.

One option is to have /*LANG*/ by language strings as done in https://github.com/espruino/BangleApps/pull/202/files - then maybe the App Loader could look up in a global table or even Google Translate the relevant strings

I put some comments on that PR. Using the English text isn't the best practice for translation, though it's very common. Also, it would be better to call a function, or at least use a hash lookup, rather than have a special comment, that makes for fragile code.