Web Development

Link: http://www.php.net/gettext

I always wondered if that is wise ?
I know wrappers are good but to what extent ?

What if I wrap a wrapper ! Will that be good ?
What if someone will wrap my wrapper in another wrapper ? Isn't that too much overhead ?

Why would anyone make a wrapper... let's say to wrap the gettext extension from PHP ?
Linux itself is translated with gettext. (More at www.gnu.org/software/gettext/)
PHP has support for gettext starting from version 3... yes it's 3 not a typo !

Follow up:

If you want multilingual interface all you need to write is:

<?php
     // Load RO locale
     setlocale(LC_ALL,  'ro_RO.utf8');
     bindtextdomain('messages', 'Locales/');
     textdomain($domain);
     bind_textdomain_codeset($domain, 'UTF-8');

     echo _('Username:') . ' <input type="text" name="username">';
     echo _('Password:') . ' <input type="password" name="password">';
     echo '<input type="submit" value="' . _('Login') . '">';
?>

So all a programmer needs to do is wrap all strings in '_()'... hmmmmmm wrapping again...

The above will output:

    Nume utilizator: [input field]
    Parola: [input field]
	[Autentificare]

If you change the line "setlocale(LC_ALL, 'ro_RO.utf8')" into "setlocale(LC_ALL, 'en_US.utf8')" you will get:

  Username: [input field]
  Password: [input field]
	[Login]

Of course there is a problem with HTML files. But there is a plugin for Smarty.
Of course you will need to write a small piece of code if you want your client to translate it's own app...

But why the need to wrap a simple call ?

Please look at it:

<?php echo _('Translate me !'); ?>

It's so simple!... isn't it ?