With a gettext emulation available in UpgradePhp, it may now be senseful to use the real gettext() instead of ewiki_t(). Though ewiki_t has a few usability advantages over it, gettext scales better (the emulated version of course not).

Code will get more readable (echo _("original text"); for example) and the useless translations in the CoreScript could get removed - most installations are English-only anyhow, and so shouldn't have German and Spanish in-memory at all.

On top of this, gettext eases translations. PhpWiki is far ahead compared to ewiki, and that's because it is far too difficult to add complete translations in ewiki.

The huge disadvantage is, that ewiki can no longer be a standalone script, a locales/ or LC_MESSAGES/ directory must always be in place then, if internationalization is desired. (Of course there is already spages/, init-pages/ and sometimes fragments/ at least with most installations.) And we lose some of the flexibility of ewiki_t(). It will therefore probably stay around for a few tasks and strings - whenever it is easier to keep it.

more notes:

• http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2002/06/13/php.html
• http://www.php.net/gettext
• http://directory.fsf.org/localization/gettext.html