Allow using custom gettext domains

[dennis@…]

I'm using django as a library in my non-web-based application. As such I prefer not to use the 'django' gettext domain but my own. I currently work around it with some symlinking trickery since being compatible with upstream django is more important than not having workarounds, but it would be great if django supported this. To illustrate what I mean, I've attached a simple and untested patch against current svn (rev 7020).

[dennis@…]

SImple and untested patch

[Bastian Kleineidam <calvin@…>]

If you change the domain you also have to rename django.mo, which I think is awkward.
You could use gettext.translation('django') for django-related strings and gettext.translation('yourapp') for other strings. This way your translations are separate and don't interfere with the django ones.

[anonymous]

That doesn't work for my use case: template strings with {% trans %}/{% blocktrans %}. I'm using the django db/model api and templating system, nothing else. So no translated strings from django are being used, but the translation infrastructure is.

[Malcolm Tredinnick]

I don't think the proposed solution is the right approach. It is best practice that the translation domain for a library or reusable component does not change, that way it is shared between all apps that want to use it. I'd prefer to see a way to specify additional translation domains, since that will allow different apps to ship in different domains.

That might be an extra template tag or something, I'm not sure. It's better than a setting, which isn't something application authors will know about -- it's in the control of the user/installer -- so they won't be able to create appropriate translation files. Application authors must be able to create PO files in their applications and users of those applications must be able to use them, so a setting can't work.

[fwenzel]

sorry, didn't mean to unset "easy pickings".

[Jannis Leidel]

Yeah, you didn't unset it, it simply didn't have any value.

[Aymeric Augustin]

Change UI/UX from NULL to False.

[Ramiro Morales]

#20070 asked for the same feature and was accepted by Jacob.

[Krzysztof Gutkowski]

Created a pull request: ​https://github.com/django/django/pull/5053

Added a setting LOCALE_FILENAMES, allowing to specify what filenames should be looked for by the internationalization system, tests, and documentation.

[Tim Graham]

Created a ​django-developers thread to ask if a new setting is fine for this.

[Tim Graham]

Claude proposed a way to avoid adding a new setting on the django-developers thread. Marking as "Patch needs improvement" in light of that.

[Rui Pereira]

​PR

[Carlton Gibson]

Current patch:

• Allows finding translations from LOCALE_PATHS but not INSTALLED_APPS.
• Doesn't allow working with makemessages.

Not sure it meets the criteria outlined above:

Application authors must be able to create PO files in their applications and users of those applications must be able to use them

Maybe it would still be good enough to allow the external translations #20070 talks about, so perhaps we could take it as it is on that basis. (​Discussion on PR.)

If so, documentation changes need some improvement.

[Timid Robot Zehta]

The Creative Common (CC) legal tools (636 licenses and 3 public domain tools) require multiple distinct translation domains so that we can have different workflows for legal text (high friction/gatekeeping) and non legal text (low friction/gatekeeping):

We have a functional workaround (​i18n/utils.py#L67-L138) but it manipulates the private _active variable, which seems fragile to me. Proper support for being able to specify a translation domain would very helpful.

Related repositories:

• ​creativecommons/cc-legal-tools-app: Legal tool (licenses, public domain dedication, etc.) management application for Creative Commons
• ​creativecommons/cc-legal-tools-data: Legal tool (licenses, public domain dedication, etc.) data for Creative Commons