Having different product images for different languges.

Having different product images for different languges.

When selling products that have text on them as sample image like t-shirt, business card etc..

marksu

As requested this would cause you problems as you wouldn't know which product the customer was looking at when they purchased.

However, these sound like product attributes. Why not use Zen Cart attributes and attribute images for to display these product attributes and properly capture the customer's preference.

Maybe I was not clear with my idea.

For example a business card selling company having many different kinds of business card templates to chouse from. Each template would have a example card representing the template.

For English pages it would show a card layout with English words like
phone:
telephone:
telefax:
etc.

For Finnish customers it would show sample card with Finnish words.
These templates would have fixed graphical layout, but the text content totally defined by customer. This way there is no misunderstanding which one user has purchased as customer will provide the text content to the card him self.

Showing English customers a Finnish business card as example is not very good idea.

Reason why I prefer not to use product attributes as that makes it complicated to browse the products as product lists.

I menssioned business card cause that is one of my business, but same could be with any other where using is supplying the text content like brochures, flyers, t-shirt with custom text etc..
Maybe better example would have been a brochure. It is better to show a brochure template with text content that just the raw brochure template without any text.

Maybe one of my business card template could clarify my idea.
First template is with Finnish language content and the other in English.

**Idea on development **
One idea would be to have separate fields for different language images like the other language fields.

Other idea could be that user could upload separately other images with prefix like eng_mypic.jpg, fin_mypic.jpg and the image name saved in database just as myimage.jpg. The prefix could be same as defined in language section for ISO standard abreviation.

Admin panel could have a flag where multiple language image feature could be enabled or disabled by the site admin.

marksu

kuroi:

As requested this would cause you problems as you wouldn't know which product the customer was looking at when they purchased.

However, these sound like product attributes. Why not use Zen Cart attributes and attribute images for to display these product attributes and properly capture the customer's preference.

Just found a thread about having multiple images for a product
https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=58

Well one of my succestions was to have a prefix to define language specific pic, just as there is multiple images per product using suffix.

Could such feature also exist or to be designed to zen cart.

marksu

I think that the prefix approach is far and away the best idea. You pipped me to the suggestion. This would possibly require no more than a small change to the zen_image function to tell it to look for the files that matched the name of the image passed to it prefixed by a language-based prefix defined in the languages file. I haven't tested this, but it's possibly quite straightforward.

There would still be the complication of understanding what the customer has actually purchased. In your example you can infer it manually from the linguistic information provided, but if the product images were of say a French Novel and the English translation, an associated attribute would still be needed to differentiate between them.

All that said, this feels more like a add-in to me than a core feature. Nice to have, even essential for some, but lacking in widespread appeal.

kuroi:

I think that the prefix approach is far and away the best idea. You pipped me to the suggestion. This would possibly require no more than a small change to the zen_image function to tell it to look for the files that matched the name of the image passed to it prefixed by a language-based prefix defined in the languages file. I haven't tested this, but it's possibly quite straightforward.

Yes well I just started to use Zen Cart so I have no knowledge building such add in. :frusty:

Sorry for my bad english as I dont understand phrase "You pipped me to the suggestion.".

kuroi:

IAll that said, this feels more like a add-in to me than a core feature. Nice to have, even essential for some, but lacking in widespread appeal.

Yes I admin it might not be used wery wide spread appeal at least at start, but that would give more power to sell template like products. I presume also that kind of feature would be unik among all web cart applications. That would turn all template product sellers favor Zen Cart over any other cart application :wink:

kuroi:

There would still be the complication of understanding what the customer has actually purchased. In your example you can infer it manually from the linguistic information provided, but if the product images were of say a French Novel and the English translation, an associated attribute would still be needed to differentiate between them.

Yes I understand what you mean. Still I dont think that is a problem, cause those cases they are totally different products and should not be used by this feature and instead be defined as separate products. That would be a missuse of the feature if it was used that way. Just because a feature can be missued, don't make it a bad feature, do you agree?

marksu

A other way of using the languge prefix could also be instead of having prefix in the file name we would use a sub directory with prefix name instead.

If Zend Cart finds a prefix sub directory containing same file name it uses that file insted.

Maybe that would be simpler and less confusing and allow easyer future development. That might also allow different kind of other addins to be build and keep them compatible with each other as the file names are not changed.

marksu

marksu:

Sorry for my bad english as I dont understand phrase "You pipped me to the suggestion.".My bad. I suspect that will have our American-speaking cousins also demanding to know what I meant. So here goes ... it's a complement. It means I was thinking the same thing, but the credit goes to you as you said it first.

marksu:

A other way of using the languge prefix could also be instead of having prefix in the file name we would use a sub directory with prefix name instead.As you go on to say, the key here is use a single filename that can act as a base for for otehr images, similarly (though differently!) to how additional images work.

kuroi:

My bad. I suspect that will have our American-speaking cousins also demanding to know what I meant. So here goes ... it's a complement. It means I was thinking the same thing, but the credit goes to you as you said it first.

Yes I now understand. The importance is though that somebody thinks of it :smile:

kuroi:

As you go on to say, the key here is use a single filename that can act as a base for for other images, similarly (though differently!) to how additional images work.

Yes exactly. :smile:

I thought to put my ideas together to one place hopefully kuroi and other gurus would read it and get some develoment ideas.

http://fotonapakymppi.fi/zen-cart/language_image/

Of couce I would also like to continue the discussion on this thread.

marksu