When you first open a brand new Drupal 6 site and are about to run the installer, you're given this information on how to install a language (pack):
If an alternative language pack of your choice is available, download and extract its contents to your Drupal root directory.
However, the Drupal root directory won't pick up any *.po, [lang]/*.po, or po/*.po - you have to place PO files in the "po" directory of the used profile (probably most often profiles/default/po). I tried searching Drupal and couldn't find this behaviour readily documented anywhere else either.
| Comment | File | Size | Author |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | language_selection.png | 29.85 KB | keith.smith |
Comments
Comment #1
keith.smith commentedThe language above was modified near the bottom of issue http://drupal.org/node/142869.
I tested by checking out a new version of head, and closely following the directions on the initial installer page, including the sentence "If an alternative language pack of your choice is available, download and extract its contents to your Drupal root directory." referenced above. For a language pack, I used the page in comment #2 of http://drupal.org/node/142869 (HungarianTest.zip). After extracting it into my Drupal root directory, and reloading the page, I did see a radio button list to select Hungarian (screen shot attached).
So it seems, at least to me, that extracting the contents of a 6.x language pack into the Drupal root directory works correctly.
All that said, I certainly defer to the larger i18n wisdom out there regarding whether this is the expected behavior.
Comment #2
meba commentedThis should be OK and you have to use language packs already made for testing (Hungarian or czech, both in node issue above). The future format of language packs on drupal.org should be same as these, so it will be automatically fixed. Am i right?
Comment #3
gábor hojtsyFresco, Drupal 6 language packs will be indistinguishably different from Drupal 5 (and before) language packs. Download the Hungarian or Czech packages provided for testing, those are packaged with the new package format. Read more about this here: http://drupal.hu/english/node/7 We use the slightly hackish packaging script available here for now: http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/drupal/contributions/tricks/po-packager/ (this can generata a package for Drupal 5 with the autolocale module but in the format we are introducing for Drupal 6).
Thankfully Drupal 6 includes support for searching these files in the right places, and my Google Summer of Code project includes porting the above hackish packaging scripts to the official packaging system, so Drupal 6 translation packages will in fact be released in that format.
The instructions are clear, telling you to download a translation package *for the version of Drupal you are using*. There are no translation packages available for Drupal 6.x-dev yet, as there is no such branch available in the contributions repository. Just as Drupal 5 modules are not compatible with Drupal 6, Drupal 5 translation packages are not directly usable in the new Drupal 6 system. The files in the Drupal.org CVS structure can be easily repackaged to reflect the changes in Drupal 6 without intervention from the translation teams though.