2015 – What to expect for mqTranslate
-
As a starter, I would like to wish you all a very happy new year 2015!
And thank you for using mqTranslate. The plugin has been downloaded more than 85,000 times and this count should reach 100,000 by the end of the month.
It is a difficult task to satisfy every user and it represents a significant amount of work just to maintain the plugin up to date with WordPress upgrades. But I’m here and will continue to support mqTranslate as long as I can. I am a user of this plugin myself, so it would be counter-productive to drop support.
However, you may have heard of other forks of the original qTranslate, among them qTranslate Plus, zTranslate and qTranslate-X. qTranslate Plus seems to be a dead project and zTranslate’s developer recently merged with the author of qTranslate-X. Those two very talented developers and I are currently discussing a possible merge of mqTranslate and qTranslate-X. Having several different forks developed concurrently is not safe for end users, so it is obvious both projects will merge at a time. We are only discussing how to do it and the best strategy to achieve the merge.
zTranslate, then qTranslate-X, implemented a different but very smart user interface for switching between languages. Furthermore, this feature is much less difficult to maintain as it is not dependant with some specific versions of WordPress or TinyMCE, and it can be easily integrated in most parts of the administration panel, allowing translation of some assets that was still unsupported. So, I will use most of my mqTranslate dedicated time to backport improvements from qTranslate-X to mqTranslate (while keeping all specific mqTranslate features). Once, both version will be “synced”, we will be able to make a proper merge. I hope this will be good for the release of WordPress 4.2 (planned in April 2015) or, at least, for 4.3 (planned in August 2015).
On another hand, I know that many support requests are left open without response, and I truly apologize for that. But as expressed earlier, I do not have time to handle it alone. That’s why this merge is a very good opportunity. From one developer today, we will be three in the future. And maybe more.
Then, this implies some changes for mqTranslate.
Current version, 2.9.1.2, will be the last of the 2.x cycle. In order to bring some consistency, further versions will be named as follow : year.month.patch_level. So, the next version will probably be 2015.4.0 (if aligned with WordPress 4.2).
Based on a suggestion of qTranslate-X’s author, mqTranslate is not a perfect name as the plugin is not tied to the original qTranslate in the WordPress plugins search engine results. As a consequence, mqTranslate may change its name in the future (while not changing its slug and filename prefix – which will remain mqtranslate – so a name starting with M would be a good pick). If you have any suggestion, I am open to it.
Testers will be needed. In order to avoid a buggy release for this new cycle, I will need some of you to check everything works fine before publishing for everyone. I will let you know when this help will be needed.
I have no doubt 2015 will be a great year for mqTranslate and the whole qTranslate community. Thank you very much for your support.
Stay tuned.
- The topic ‘2015 – What to expect for mqTranslate’ is closed to new replies.