[TYPO3-dam] DAM & multilinguism

[Laurent Verhoest]

Hi all,

I have a problem on an internal project using the DAM in several 
langages and here are my thoughts (long mail following, sorry for the 
long read, especially if this issue has already been discussed).

I know you can create a 'translated' record of a DAM object cheating 
with the 'alternate langage page' of the "Media" root. But you can only 
translate part of the metadata (like title, desc and so on)

That's ok for me not to translate everything in the metadata, but there 
are 2 pb (imho) :
 - first : you can't change the file (physical on disk) itself ! If i 
happen to publish a pdf in english, and then its translated version in 
french, i would like to change the real file people will download. 
That's currently impossible because the "File" section (when editing 
metadata) is readonly (and related data for the translated record in 
tx_dam is empty).
 - second : DAM categories can't be translated :-((


I think first pb could be solved because in the DB, all fields exists to 
change the file & path and that way we keep the link between a file and 
its translated version.
I have tried to work around the first pb by cheating the config of 
fields and set them writable. But it's not much worth because i can only 
type a filename and a path, ican't upload the real file (except via 
direct ftp, but that's cheating and not the way my users would work).

One good thing would be to add a last action in the "File" section of 
the metadata in order to replace the current file with a new one to be 
uploaded.
But there is another pb i think, it is that the Media>File view gets to 
list file by reading the disk directory, not the database (maybe i 
missed sth though). So files will be mixed up. Better presentation would 
be to use the on in the Web>List view, where you can see the files and 
the link between a file and its translated version (would need to add a 
column to localize a file).


For the second pb (multilingual categories), it would requiere a change 
in DB as table tx_dam_cat doesn't handle multilang (adding the columns 
sys_language_uid and l18n_parent), and modifying the BE to and a 
translated version of a category.
My idea would be to be that i add a english doc A and set it category to 
C1. Then i create the translated version of doc A in french : it keeps 
the link to cat C1, but if i log in the BE in french, i can see the 
French version of cat C1, and if i search for it using cat C1, i find 
the version in the current lang.
(i don't know if all this last stuff is really clear...)


What do you think about all this, and thanks for your help/advice ?

Laurent