Re: YAMS: Yet Another Multilingual Solution

YAMS 1.1.0 alpha is now available for download from my server. This download is NOT recommended for everyone. It contains a preliminary implementation of multilingual aliases that can be used for testing.

To see the multilingual aliases in action, have a browse around the different language versions of the pages on http://nashi.podzone.org/. Note that YAMS will correctly encode aliases containing multi-byte characters. (Note, given that I was able to achieve this with about 10 lines of code - I don’t understand what the transalias plugin is about with all its mapping tables etc. Am I missing something?)

I haven’t updated any of the documentation within YAMS to explain how it works, so here’s a brief summary:
- Currently you can only use multilingual aliases in conjunction with language dependent server names or root names (or both), but in future I hope to be able to relax this.
- To activate multilingual aliases, go to
Modules>YAMS>Other Params.
- There are two parameters relevant to multilingual aliases.
The first says whether you want them on or not.
The second says whether you intend for the aliases to be unique or not.
You need to decide on the values of both parameters before you select update, because once you have done that YAMS will automatically create your multilingual alias template variables and populate them with default data. If you choose non-unique, then each language variant will be given the same alias as the original document alias. If you choose unique aliases then the aliases will be prefixed by {langId}- where {langId} is the language group id.
At present, that’s all that the unique/non-unique setting does, but in future it will
a) allow you to be warned if you were intending to create unique aliases but have failed.
b) allow YAMS to determine the document and language uniquely from the alias without having to use server name or root name modes to achieve that.

That’s all there is to it really. There will be an extra alias field when you edit your documents that you can change. Put whatever you like in there. The URLs generated by YAMS *should* be correctly encoded. I don’t know if there are many people out there not using UTF-8, but if there is anyone, it would be useful to know if this all works with non-UTF-8 encodings.

mgbowman, thanks for all your hard work developing the guts of the multilingual alias code. It would have taken me a lot longer to get to this stage without your help!

Is YAMS 1.1.0 alpha stable enough to use on a new site? I’m building a site right now which could use multilingual aliases.

Well, like I say this is an early alpha release for testing. To me, the alpha really means:

This is so new that it hasn’t been thoroughly tested yet and so I don’t recommend you use it on live sites where high quality is important/bugs are unacceptable or where you are working to tight deadlines. This is because:

- you might encounter a bug that it wont be fixable
- you might encounter a bug that will take some time to fix
- I might decide to change how something works/is implemented during development and testing, so you might need to update your installation as new versions are released.

That said, if you have a time available (anywhere between a couple of hours to a couple of days depending on how experienced you are) to install and test it then you might find that it works how you want - or if it doesn’t, you should just be able to switch off the multilingual aliases feature or downgrade to YAMS 1.0.5 beta.

I don’t want to scare people off trying it out, because testing and feedback would be useful - but I’d give it another couple of weeks before deciding whether to use 1.1.0 alpha version on a production site.

On a related note, if anyone would like to use YAMS on a particular project - but perhaps doesn’t have the time/inclination/technical abilities to set it up themselves then I would be happy to provide consultancy support, which could include advising on what is currently possible or not and setting-up YAMS in various configurations to work with various plugins and snippets.

If anyone has a client that needs a feature that isn’t currently in a stable version of YAMS (like multilingual aliases) then, if possible, I’d be happy to provide a quote for the testing and developing required to get it working in they way they want on their site (provided any developments made to YAMS could be made available to everyone).

Please send me a personal message in either case.

@MediaGuy - I’m going to be using it (as well as any future versions) for a production site that I’m currently migrating over. I needed the multilingual aliases bad enough that I collab’d with PMS and helped him with it (just read the last few pages of this forum).

I’d be awesome if you could set it up and help out with testing. I’m going to be actively developing it alongside my site migration (for example if something is broke or I need extra functionality). If you have any ideas or suggestions, shout ’em out. I’d love to have another perspective on how MODx + YAMS could improve.

Cheers,
--mgbowman

@PMS - When I get time to work on the site migration I’ll upgrade to 1.1.0a right away and start fresh from there. How do you think we should go about me continuing to contribute code to you? Do you want me to send patches or are you using a SCM you would share? I would like to help improve the MODx + YAMS integration as there aren’t many elegant solutions for multi-lingual CMS (especially with multilingual aliases) so I would love to see this combo improve over time as I’m sure you do.

Let me know what you think,
--mgbowman

@mgbowman I would love to test it, but I need to release the site very soon. So I can’t test it with this site at the moment.

Maybe I will setup another site, just to test YAMS!

@PMS - When I get time to work on the site migration I’ll upgrade to 1.1.0a right away and start fresh from there. How do you think we should go about me continuing to contribute code to you? Do you want me to send patches or are you using a SCM you would share?

My preferred method would be that we discuss what changes need to be made here and how best to implement them, and that you send patches that I review and merge into the core.

I started using subversion a couple of weeks ago, but only via local access. So, I have just set up a subversion server (in read-only mode) and migrated the repository across. That way you can always check out and test with a bleeding edge version. I’ll send you a personal message with the details.

I would like to help improve the MODx + YAMS integration as there aren’t many elegant solutions for multi-lingual CMS (especially with multilingual aliases) so I would love to see this combo improve over time as I’m sure you do.

Yes. I definitely do. My goal is to make this the best multilingual website management tool there is. Your support is much appreciated.

YAMS 1.1.1 alpha is now available for download from my server. This download is NOT recommended for everyone. It contains a preliminary implementation of multilingual aliases that can be used for testing.

This version is, I believe, an important step closer to the set-up that a lot of people will want. Now, if unique multilingual aliases are used, it is no longer necessary to specify language dependent root names or server names. YAMS will determine the language group id and document id from the alias. This should work with friendly alias paths on or off.

While YAMS will autogenerate unique multilingual aliases when this setting is switched on (provided the original document aliases were unique that is), it is currently the users’ responsibility to ensure that they stay that way. Along with updated documentation, a plugin that will warn when aliases are not unique (OnDocFormSave) is next in the pipe-line.

Okay. Here is my latest offering. Hope you’re keeping up. YAMS 1.1.2 alpha is now available for download from my server.

This version adds support for viewing pages via index.php?id=... style URLs. This was previously broken. So, preview from the document tree now works again. Also fixed a bug whereby callbacks were being registered statically when they shouldn’t have been. This didn’t appear to be causing any problems - but I’m sure it would have come back to bite me if I didn’t fix it.

Jonimant sent me a PM:

You know how in modx popup windows, you can do? AddpopupLink snippet does not work with the yams.

AddpopupLink doesn’t work because it uses index.php?id= style URLs and in older versions of YAMS this was only supported if the z=manprev query parameter was set. You’ve got three options now.

1) By coincidence, I fixed this in YAMS 1.1.2 alpha today. So, if you’d like to help out with testing, you could try out version 1.1.2 alpha and see how you get on. AddpopupLink should work with this version of YAMS.

2) You could try adding &stringAPL=`z:manprev` to your AddpopupLink snippet call.

3) If you want to stick with an older version of YAMS for the time being (1.0.5 beta say) but don’t want to have to modify your AddpopupLink snippet calls then you can use the attached YAMS customised version of the snippet. For the URL it outputs a yams placeholder like so (yams_doc:docId) which will output a valid multilingual url for document docId.