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lastorset edited this page Jan 23, 2013 · 17 revisions

Local Exchange supports implementation of a Local Exchange Trading System. See LETSLink UK or Wikipedia for more information.

This version is manually forked from the Local Exchange project, written by Calvin Priest, Chris Macdonald and Rob Follett and Evert Jan Klein Velderman. There is currently no public official repository, but Chris MacDonald has since published [the UK version] (https://github.com/cdmweb/Local-Exchange-UK) on GitHub.

I plan to submit the changes in this fork back to the UK version. You may also be interested in a rewrite being undertaken by Michał Rudnicki and called [Sundial XC] (https://github.com/stronger/sundial-xc).

Stability

The master branch is currently in beta state. There might be crashes and inconsistencies, and configuration is not streamlined.

Major changes in this fork

Translation system

See also: Current status

The UK version was not translatable. A translation system was devised for the Netherlands version, based on replacing every string of text (such as "Enter your name:") with a placeholder variable (such as $lng_enter_your_name). The Oslo fork migrates the Dutch translation system to GNU Gettext, so that strings of text are intact in program code (and appear as _("Enter your name:")).

The main advantages (aside from code readability) is fewer crashes and allowing translators to employ easy-to-use tools like Poedit.

Self-registration

An option to enable anonymous users to register themselves has been added. This currently does not enjoy CAPTCHA protection due to usability concerns, but a simpler solution will be added in the future.

Karma points

A measure of a user's activity in the system, as well as the equilibrium between what was given and what was received. The points are the lesser number of units spent and earned, though this is not spelled out for the user, to allow us to tweak the algorithm later.

Maps

Members may be displayed on a map on the front page (see http://lets.no for an example). They are automatically geocoded using the Google Maps API. Anonymous users are shown obfuscated locations, in order to maintain members' privacy.

Et cetera

Of course, a number of bugs are also fixed, as well as some incompatibilities with PHP 5.

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