Re: Future Japanese Language Pack Status, version 1.5.5 and beyond...
Good news. After spending some days figuring out which version of Ubuntu has the right combination of permitted PHP, MySQL, and openssl to pass pre-installation tests, turns out Ubuntu 12.04 LTS fits the bill. One VMware installation later, and 1.5.1 Japanese was installed, and shipping modules checked.
The great news is that the Japanese shipping modules work, and that the size is not currently passed, only the weight, which can be calculated from the products table entries for an order. However, the size calculation code is there, so that if the module passes length, width and height for a parcel, one can get the correct quote.
The trick of course now is twofold:
(1) adding length, width and height to the products_table. That is the easy part.
(2) finding a way to estimate parcel size(s) for an order. For that I will try to see what the Canada Post module has for this purpose.
The existing order module already calculates multiple boxes depending on weight. It remains to be seen how difficult it would be to extend that logic to handle per-product sizes. I cannot see myself writing any smart optimization lowest cost algorithm to go through permutations to find minima for weight and sizes together. Probably just go with biggest size, and then fill to the largest weight permitted by those size constraints, then to the next box.
Now that the modules are shown to be workable, I plan to do something about the configuration options, which are hard-coded into the module files, instead of using language-dependent constants. That will be part of the translation package.
Zen Cart 1.5.6c modified to support Japanese language (postage module support work in progress). Upgraded incrementally each version from initial 1.5.5d.
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