Proper language system for plugins and themes

[Daedalon]

The plugin and theme system needs an overhaul for languages. It's common for any plugin to include dozens of language files, of which users will use on average only one, leading to wasted disk space and bandwidth. This is a pain especially with backups.

How it works now

1. User installs a plugin (or theme).
2. Numerous languages are downloaded and installed for the plugin.
3. Of them, only one will be used.
4. The rest of the language files will sit idle, eating disk space. Sometimes over half of the plugin's size.
5. Languages for a plugin cannot be automatically updated without a plugin update.

How it should work

1. User installs a plugin (or theme).
2. WordPress downloads only the needed language files. For this, wordpress.org has provided a standardized way to host them at e.g. Trac.
3. No disk space wasted.
4. No bandwidth wasted.
5. WordPress checks periodically if any plugin or theme has updates for the used language(s).

References

​http://wordpress.org/support/topic/reduce-plugin-size-download-only-needed-languages

​http://wordpress.org/support/topic/reduce-plugin-size-download-only-needed-languages-1

[ocean90]

The first steps are already done, see #18200 and ​http://ottopress.com/2013/language-packs-101-prepwork/.

[coolmann]

WP SlimStat already implements all the prerequisites described in Otto's article (with the exception of the folder name, which is 'lang' and not 'languages', for us). However it's still unclear to me where the language files should be uploaded for the user's system to download the necessary files. Hopefully this will be developed/completed in WP 3.9. We would love to implement this functionality in our plugin.

[markoheijnen]

WordPress doesn't have a standardized way of hosting this yet. At least from GlotPress (used on ​http://translate.wordpress.org) a lot of ground work still need to be done.

I also believe this ticket can be closed since the ground work in core is already done but I can be wrong about that.

[coolmann]

Replying to markoheijnen:

I also believe this ticket can be closed since the ground work in core is already done but I can be wrong about that.

Should we open a ticket for the 'hosting' piece, then? This ticket mentions it.

Also, while waiting for WP.org to implement a repo system, is there a way for plugin developers to point the updater to a third-party repo to check for updates?

[nacin]

Replying to coolmann:

Also, while waiting for WP.org to implement a repo system, is there a way for plugin developers to point the updater to a third-party repo to check for updates?

Hypothetically by filtering the API response. I'm closing this out as #18200 handled this and we're working on the WP.org side of things during 3.9.