Configurable user interface

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This page is completely obsolete. The last substantive edit was made on 26 September 2004.

Some thoughts on the configuring the user interface.

Default Behaviour

We should not do anything too fancy. By default, the user interface should be in the language of the wikipedia, so if you visit a Japanese wikipedia, you'll get a Japanese interface.

Configurability

We want the user to also be able to set the user interface language. I propose that the user should be able to use more than one language at a time. We provide a set of check boxes in the preferences:

Enable Languages

Enable interface language:

[] Afrikaans      [] Araby         [] Bahasa Melayu   [] Bosnian
[] Català         [] Český         [] Cymraeg         [] Dansk 
[] Deutsch        [] English       [] Español         [] Esperanto 
[] Eesti          [] Euskara       [] Suomeksi        [] Français 
[] Frysk          [] Galego        [] हिन्दी (Hindi)  [] עברית Ivrit 
[] Hrvatski       [] Magyar        [] Interlingua     [] Indonesia 
[] Italiano       [] 日本語 Nihongo [] 한국어 Hangukeo  [] Latina 
[] Latviešu       [] Lietuvių      [] Nahuatl         [] Nederlands 
[] Plattdüütsch   [] Norsk         [] Occitan         [] Polski 
[] Português      [] Română        [] Русский Russkiy [] Hrvatosrbska 
[] Simple English [] Shqip         [] Slovensko       [] Srpski 
[] Svensk         [] Türkçe        [] Tiếng Việt 
[] 繁体中文 Zhongwen   [] 简体中文 Zhongwen (simplified)

[Enable All] [Disable All]

When the user visits a wikipedia, the interface should be in the same language as the wikipedia if he enabled the language.
If the user has not enabled the language, the user's default language is used
All languages are enabled by default

Default Language

There also needs to be drop down box so the user can select which of his languages is the default language

Select default language (among enabled)
-----------------
| Bahasa Melayu |
| English       | <-- selected
| Francais      |
-----------------

Simple English

Simple English should be the default default (sic) user interface language

MediaWiki namespace

We should consider exclusively using the MediaWiki namespace for localisation. It seems that would simplify the code greatly, no?

MediaWiki currently doesn't allow everything to be localized, though. For example, the namespaces can't be localized, so every language wiki will have to use Special:, Image:, etc. – [[User:Mxn|Minh Nguyễn (talk, blog)]] 20:11, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)