Hi,
When filling out your profile page, you are given a preset option of picking "Taiwan, Province of China." Why is this particular description chosen? Do the Moodle maintainers know that this is a highly politicized phrase? I have students in class for whom it's obvious that Taiwan is an independent country and not at all a "province of China." They find it offensive to click on this option. I'm advicing them to take temporary refuge in "Switzerland" but that's not an ideal option.
Why not just call the country "Taiwan"?
yours always,
Erik
Yes, this is a highly political issue, which is why the official Moodle release ships with the list of countries here: http://www.iso.org/iso/iso3166_en_code_lists.txt
However, this is open-source software. If you want to change it, you need only find where that list is stored in the source code, and edit it.
It is stored in the language pack: http://cvs.moodle.org/moodle/lang/en_utf8/countries.php?view=markup&pathrev=MOODLE_19_STABLE. So, if you just want to rename an existing entry, you can use the standard language editing tool in the admin section.
However, this is open-source software. If you want to change it, you need only find where that list is stored in the source code, and edit it.
It is stored in the language pack: http://cvs.moodle.org/moodle/lang/en_utf8/countries.php?view=markup&pathrev=MOODLE_19_STABLE. So, if you just want to rename an existing entry, you can use the standard language editing tool in the admin section.
Hi Tim,
After some fiddling, I went into the language file on the server and changed things around. It worked and the students can now choose between "Taiwan, Independent and Free," "Taiwan, Province of China," and "Republic of China." That should cover it.
Still, I think the default option is insensitive. The official name of the country is "Taiwan, Republic of China." You wouldn't like the US to be referred to as "United States, province of Britain."
yours always,
Erik
After some fiddling, I went into the language file on the server and changed things around. It worked and the students can now choose between "Taiwan, Independent and Free," "Taiwan, Province of China," and "Republic of China." That should cover it.
Still, I think the default option is insensitive. The official name of the country is "Taiwan, Republic of China." You wouldn't like the US to be referred to as "United States, province of Britain."
yours always,
Erik
Actually, being British, that would amuse me 
Anyway, the point is, the insensitivity is not on the part of Moodle, but on the part of ISO http://www.iso.org/iso/home.htm.
Anyway, the point is, the insensitivity is not on the part of Moodle, but on the part of ISO http://www.iso.org/iso/home.htm.
I agree that the default should not be "Taiwan, Province of China". Since our company is located in Taiwan, we would definitely have a lot of angry users if we were to leave that.
Unfortunately, I'm a bit at a loss on how to change this. Originally, I went to Site Administration > Language > Language Editing and then clicked on the "Edit Words or Phrases" link under "Local string customization"; however, I would get an error message stating "ERROR: Could not create directory /home/tprt/public_html/e-learning/uploaddata/lang/en_utf8_local".
I then used FTP to manually create the directory; next, I downloaded a "countries.php" file from http://cvs.moodle.org/moodle/lang/en_utf8/countries.php?view=markup&pathrev=MOODLE_19_STABLE, and then re-uploaded the file to my newly created "en_utf8_local" directory. This allowed the page to show up properly from within Moodle's Administration > Language > Language Editing > Local string customization > Edit Words and Phrases.
However, when I edit the field and try to change the entry from "Taiwan, Province of China" to "Taiwan, Republic of China", clicking on the button "Save changes: countries.php" doesn't seem to have any effect, as the dropdown menu for "Countries" still lists Taiwan as "Taiwan, Province of China". Also, at the top of that page for editing countries.php, it now says "Number of missing strings: 1"; and when I click on the "Go to first missing string" link below that, it takes me to the entry for Taiwan. :-0
So what am I doing wrong? I also tried using Notepad to directly edit Taiwan's entry in the PHP file before uploading it to the server, still doesn't have any effect.
Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide. Much appreciated!
L.F. Lee
I think your problem stems from the fact that Moodle cannot create a folder inside uploaddata. Can you check that that folder is writeable by the web server? If it isn't other things beside language string editing will not work.
Tim Hunt,
Thank you for your reply, and apologies for my own late reply; it's been a very busy week at work this past week.
I checked the File Attributes for the root folder where I have Moodle installed, and this is what's listed:
Read Write Execute
Owner x x x
Group x x
Public x x
I tried assigning Write privileges to both Group and Public permissions, checking the "Recurse into subdirectories" to ensure that all subdirectories and files received the same; however, after doing so, I would receive an error message when trying to view the front page of our Moodle site. :-0 So I went back in and unassigned Write privileges to both of those groups.
Before I go back in and mess around any further, I just wanted to confirm (1) at what level I should be trying to assign the Write privileges (the "uploaddata" folder? Or just the "lang" subfolder? Or should I be going up a level in the hierarchy?); and (2) should these Write privileges be given to "Group Permissions", "Public Permissions", or both? I'm a bit worried about screwing things up too much and just want to be sure I'm doing this for the correct folder(s)..
Thanks again,
L.F. Lee
Hi,
Here at the University of Southampton we are having the same problem.
A folder in moodledate was created, moodle says the file was created successfully the folder exists and says
// $Id$
// countries.php - created with Moodle 1.9.5+ (Build: 20090610) (2007101550)
// local modifications from http://www.languagehouse.soton.ac.uk
$string['TW'] = 'Taiwan';
However it still doesn't change anything in Moodle.
I have also changed the actual language pack in the main moodle directory and also still find it has made no difference.
Graham R
Here at the University of Southampton we are having the same problem.
A folder in moodledate was created, moodle says the file was created successfully the folder exists and says
// $Id$
// countries.php - created with Moodle 1.9.5+ (Build: 20090610) (2007101550)
// local modifications from http://www.languagehouse.soton.ac.uk
$string['TW'] = 'Taiwan';
However it still doesn't change anything in Moodle.
I have also changed the actual language pack in the main moodle directory and also still find it has made no difference.
Graham R
I guess there must be a bug. The code that loads countries.php is get_list_of_countries in lib/moodlelib.php.
Do you have the necessary PHP debugging skills to work out why it is not working for you?
Do you have the necessary PHP debugging skills to work out why it is not working for you?
The necessary PHP debugging skills? Unfortunately, no, I do not... :-0 Any suggestions?
I do but don't currently have a moodle test site, only a live one. I'll try and duplicate the site somewhere
OK I'm not sure if I'm getting anywhere or not, so I'll write what I'm doing and someone with more knowledge can jump in.
My live site is running on a Windows Server 2003 virtual server. It is Moodle 1.9.5+ (20090610)
My new test site is running on WampServer on my local pc. It is Moodle 1.9.5+ (20090708)
When doing the following
- Log in as admin
- Go to administration
- Language
- Language editing
- Edit words or phrases
- Countries.php
- Find Taiwan, Prov...
- Remove the ', Prov...' bit
- Press 'Save countries.php'
Here the differences start. On the live server it says
Changes saved (C:\data\languagehouse\moodledata/lang/en_utf8_local/countries.php)
However it also says
No missing strings
On the test server it says
Changes saved (C:\wamp\moodledata/lang/en_utf8_local/countries.php)
However it also says
Number of missing strings: 1
Taiwan is highlighted green as a missing string and DOES have the new edited text.
The trouble is that this still doesn't change the country list in edit profile.
[Edit]
I have fixed this issue and loggged a bug in tracker
http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-19764
My live site is running on a Windows Server 2003 virtual server. It is Moodle 1.9.5+ (20090610)
My new test site is running on WampServer on my local pc. It is Moodle 1.9.5+ (20090708)
When doing the following
- Log in as admin
- Go to administration
- Language
- Language editing
- Edit words or phrases
- Countries.php
- Find Taiwan, Prov...
- Remove the ', Prov...' bit
- Press 'Save countries.php'
Here the differences start. On the live server it says
Changes saved (C:\data\languagehouse\moodledata/lang/en_utf8_local/countries.php)
However it also says
No missing strings
On the test server it says
Changes saved (C:\wamp\moodledata/lang/en_utf8_local/countries.php)
However it also says
Number of missing strings: 1
Taiwan is highlighted green as a missing string and DOES have the new edited text.
The trouble is that this still doesn't change the country list in edit profile.
[Edit]
I have fixed this issue and loggged a bug in tracker
http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-19764