Renaming modules/elements of the system - how to...

Renaming modules/elements of the system - how to...

by Ian Usher -
Number of replies: 6

Hello!

I'm developing the use of Moodle as a cross between a CMS (since many of its tools address things we'd need from a CMS) and a VLE... however, many of our users would find it less confusing if everything was not called a 'Course' but a 'Resource' (and yes, I know that's an internal name but humour me for a mo').

This leads to two questions:

  1. I know there's not at the moment, but is there a plan to allow the capability to rename certain modules across the system? For example, I've seen discussion about how the Wiki module might be renamed a 'Collaborative Writing' module for some users.
    I'd guess the interface for renaming these could be sitewide, but could also be slightly more granular, in a similar way to how a 'Teacher' on a particular course can be edited to be a 'Non Editing Teacher', as in some of the sample courses on this site.
  2. As that functionality's not here yet, how could I make a sitewide change so that 'Search Courses' becomes 'Search Resources', 'List of Courses' becomes 'List of Resources' etc. etc. I'm guessing it's embedded all over the place rather than being a variable somewhere... is this correct?

Any tips gratefully answered.

Ian.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Ian Usher

Re: Renaming modules/elements of the system - how to...

by Petr Skoda -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Automatic "renaming" would be very problematic for some languages. English is very simple language, other languages are much, much more complicated.

"Reusing" of words (Teacher, Student) in moodle interface is not a good practice, because in some languages words have many different forms. It is ok to use $a in language files for numbers and data from database, but it is not correct to construct whole sentences using several $a's.

Another problem is that in English some words have the same form for verbs and nouns. For example "to mark" / "the mark". The teacher presses button "to mark = in czech Oznámkovat", but the table heading is "the student's mark = in czech Známka". The strings for buttons and table headings should be different sad
In reply to Petr Skoda

Re: Renaming modules/elements of the system - how to...

by Hans de Zwart -
What Petr is saying is true. But for your personal site it is not at all a problem to change the word course to resource.  Check the following information from Koen Roggemans' translator guide:

Log on to you'r Moodle server as administrator. Go to administration, choose language. You're now on the language administration page. On this page you can choose from the language menu wich language you want to edit. Now you can check for missing strings or compare and edit current language by clicking on the link. Compare and edit current language - when you click on this option, you get on top of the page a top menu with all the currently installed modules. You can select wich module you want to translate. On the rest of the page you'll see three collumns, the first containing all string names of a module, the second collumn the English word/sentence for that string and in the thirth collumn the translation in the current language. On the bottom of the page you'll gind a submit button. When you push this button, your changes are written in the appropriate file in your language pack.

Just find all occurances of course and change them to resource. It shouldn't be too many because the words are reused a lot. Don't forget to also change the plurals.
Average of ratings: Useful (2)
In reply to Hans de Zwart

Re: Renaming modules/elements of the system - how to...

by W Page -
Hello All!

I do not know wow it is done but in phpNuke the ability to change the name of modules and blocks is built into the program.  It is done on the modules or blocks page.

WP1
In reply to Ian Usher

Re: Renaming modules/elements of the system - how to...

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
The short answer is to create yourself a new language in moodle/lang ... just duplicate en to en_loc or something, then edit that in Moodle using Admin -> Config -> Language -> Edit
Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Renaming modules/elements of the system - how to...

by Ian Usher -

Gentlemen,

Very useful answers all of them. If I was wearing a hat I'd be taking it off to y'all - again...

And so to work...

Thanks again!

In reply to Ian Usher

Re: Renaming modules/elements of the system - how to...

by koen roggemans -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Translators

You can read this document first (and send a correction of the language errors pleas smile)

edit: woops, Hans quoted that already, missed that ... correctionsuggestions (content and English still welcome of course)