[OSM-dev] extracting output text from api_controller

[Richard Fairhurst]

Tom Hughes wrote:

> Any i18n support in the user interface of the editors is a separate
> matter I think.

It's an interesting one. Because ultimately we can translate "The bbox  
is too big", "You have unsaved changes", "No response was received  
from the server" &c. to our heart's content... but it's a bit futile  
given that "highway=primary" and its ilk, the basic block of our  
entire data, is two English words.

So the main challenge is what to do about this. I think it's going to  
mean offering an abstraction away from keys and values, so you have a  
dialogue/palette/whatever like:

         Road type:    [primary A (green signs)  \/ ]
         Street name:  [____________________________]

         (_) One way

which is translated (very badly) into:

         Type de voie: [voie express             \/ ]
         Nom de rue:   [____________________________]

         (_) Sens unique

and so on. That is of course a whole new kettle of fish, especially  
given that we probably won't want a simple UI element <-> tag/value  
mapping.

cheers
Richard