[Mediawiki-i18n] Google Summer of Code project: improving language support and Incubator usability

[Robin Pepermans]

Hello,

I am one of the Google Summer of Code students and I will be working
on improving language support in MediaWiki (in particular with regards
to language names) and improving the usability of Wikimedia Incubator
(following my previous work on the Incubator-specific extension).
More information is available on
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:SPQRobin/GSoC/application and I
will be posting progress updates on
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:SPQRobin/GSoC/notes for who is
interested.

My first work will be the MediaWiki core part, for language names. I
will implement a language names cache (likely CDB) and I will make
English language names available in MediaWiki by default (as I once
proposed on wikitech), similar to the list currently in the Babel
extension (which would then be no longer needed). This would avoid
duplication and make language names consistent.
The biggest inconsistency currently is a difference between using
{{#language:xyz}} and {{#language:xyz|xyz}}, which both give native
names, but the first one only uses MediaWiki names and the second one
also additional data like CLDR. See
https://translatewiki.net/wiki/User:SPQRobin/languages for the
difference.
To make them consistent, I want to make our MediaWiki language names
(in Names.php) lowercase where this is usual (like: Français ->
français). I don't mind if it is displayed lowercase, but maybe others
do (for example in the interwiki sidebar). Plus, it might cause
problems for pages/templates using {{#language}} that depend on this
difference between MediaWiki and CLDR names.

Any idea, comment or feedback is welcome :)

Regards,
Robin