Anyone needs switching locales and themes at runtime?

Hi,

for 0.8 we are considering to remove two feature currently available in
0.7. We are very interested how you feel about this.

1. No longer support switching locales/languages of the application at
runtime.

While it looks like a nice feature the actual usefulness seems pretty
low. Most applications (e.g. gmx.com) change the locale only after a
restart. Changing the locale is not a common action and it may be OK to
require a reload to apply the change.  None of the other toolkits
support the dynamic change. dojo and GWT determine the locale at
application startup either through URL parameters or other static resources.

The cost of having the dynamic approach is:

 - for each translatable string (this.tr("...")) in the application we
have to keep an instance of qx.locale.LocalizedString
 - in each widget (mostly labels) we need to keep a connection to the
localized string and listen for locale changes
 - each widget has to be prepared to handle localized strings in each
place where a normal string, which is shown at the screen, is expected.
If it gets a localized string it must establish a connection to the
locale manager to listen for locale changes and update the displayed string.
 - At startup, all translated strings for all possible locales must be
transferred together with the application
 - some widgets need special and sometimes complex code  to handle
locale changes at runtime:
   - DateChooser
   - DateChooserButton
   - ComboBox
   - Button
   - Table

Being able to change the locale at runtime comes with a cost and we
think the cost is too high to justify this feature.
<http://bugzilla.qooxdoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=871>


2. No longer support changing the theme at runtime

Basically the same arguments apply to theming. Changing the theme at
runtime requires us to always keep a connection between the widgets and
the associated theme entries. This costs runtime performance, memory and
increases the complexity of the widgets.
<http://bugzilla.qooxdoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=861>


I know both features are cool but do we really NEED it. Does anyone
depend on one of the mentioned features or plans to use them? We really
like to know how you feel about this.


Best Fabian

--
Fabian Jakobs
JavaScript Framework Developer

1&1 Internet AG
Brauerstraße 48
76135 Karlsruhe

Amtsgericht Montabaur HRB 6484

Vorstand: Henning Ahlert, Ralph Dommermuth, Matthias Ehrlich, Thomas Gottschlich, Matthias Greve, Robert Hoffmann, Markus Huhn, Oliver Mauss, Achim Weiss
Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender: Michael Scheeren


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