
Joomla! M17n (Multilingualization) Package
---------------------------------------------
 
By:		SDIC - Jason Johnston <joomla@sdic.ch>
Package:	Joomla / M17n (Multilingualization)
Version:	Joomla 1.5 Stable
 
Files & Instructions:
 Quick guide explaining basic install & setup is in quick.txt
 Installation instructions are located in install.txt
 Management instructions are located in manage.txt

Description: 
 
 This package allows turning your Joomla website into a 
 multilingual site quickly and easily. The main idea here
 was NOT to provide a whole "Language Manager" nor to hack
 all joomla tables to include language locales but rather
 to use the existing features to have M17n implemented.

 This simple pack contains:

	- M17n Module: Shows a language selector.
	- Main Menu Module: Replaces Joomla mainmenu
	- M17n Plugin: Handles the language variables
	- Admin Hack: com_menu item parameter tweak
	- Admin Hack: Filter for itemlist in com_menu
 
 First, let us explain you how this package works. Instead
 of implementing the M17n features on the data model side,
 that is the database & table fields, this package does
 not affect the DB structure but rather uses the existing
 fields to operate the multilingual tasks.

 The package is actually using native Joomla Features to
 be able to display multiple languages on the same site.
 In fact, the M17n is implemented in the menus. You can
 pick and set a language for each menu item. M17n module
 allows the user to select a language and the menus will
 only display items in  the currently selected language. 

 The strength of this mechanism is that it uses the
 languages already installed and does not changes your
 way of managing your pages into joomla.

 Now, an association keys mechanism allows setting up
 "replicated" site structures. You can implement this
 option only on the menus that have matching "brothers"
 in other languages or you can apply it to the whole
 structure of your site while this may be some "heavy"
 solution which might become difficult to maintain.

 Please report bugs and request support: joomla@sdic.ch

 For more information about us, visit our website at:
 http://www.sdic.ch

Thanks & Credits

 Thanks to all the people who downloaded, shared and
 shown some interest for the M17n package. And to...

 Joomla users for they gratefull votes and comments:
 newart, heros, rimantask, Daan34, Christer, ltvz,
 febic, eeerlend, joom_ua, cuyapo

 Thank alot to Tobias Frasch for his contribution and his
 investigation / solution regarding the Legacy 1.0 plugin 
 compatibility, I could fix it thanks to him. And also many
 thanks to Nick Davina for his code improvement on the 
 1.5.2 release (auto-detection based on URL Itemid)
 
 Web users and testers for giving M17n a chance while it
 was only under developpment during the RC phases and 
 for their great feedback:
 C. Condrup, O. Sluitman, P. Spinelli, F. Machado Alves,
 Jonas, A. Tuppurainen, J. Kalavera :), H. Fatnassi,
 H. Ove Gloppen, A. Pasqualini, B. Vereecke

 And special thanks for they feedback, appreciation and
 for all of the above reasons and more specificly:
 Hung Lee for the great support and many ideas
 Sylvain Holin for the huge testing and feedback
 Crister Toivonen for support, ideas and solutions
 David Clabaut for relevant suggestion on implementation
 Bart Vereecke for is his bug-hunting and investigations
 Matthieu Codron for is the hints on installation

 And of course to Denis Ducret, my boss, for allowing me
 to spend my spare time ans some more on this package.

 It is a pleasure for me to contribute to Joomla in any
 way so my last thanks will be for the Joomla Teams for
 providing such a great tool to the community.

 Thank you all and Enjoy the package. Jason!