Refactoring and improvements

[marklagendijk]

@loudenvier I finally got some time to convert all the language files to .json. This pull requests contains the following (big) changes:

1. All language files are converted to .json
2. Gulp is added for building tasks. Both the .js files and demo files are automatically generated (see README.md)
3. Added bower.json file, so the repository can be distributed via Bower.
4. Updated README to reflect the above described changes.

[loudenvier]

Nice work. Since I've got no idea what Gulp is, I'll have to consider if it will add any dependency to use the project. Currently all you have to do is to drop the needed JS, and I would like for this project to remain as simple as possible. So I'll weight the pros and cons of a JSON approach (I didn't actually looked at the changes to see how it works, I may not be making sense :-) )

[marklagendijk]

I will explain a bit more about my changes, and also why I added Gulp and what it does.

The current approach of this project is nice when your application just uses one language. You just drop in the appropriate language file and you're done.
However, when you have to support multiple languages (especially if you're only using client-side code), this may become a problem. In cases like this you have to be able to dynamically load the right labels.
My changes are aimed at solving both problems, while still keeping it simple to contribute to the project, and maintain it:

1. People should still be able to just drop in the right Javascript file and be done.
2. When people need to be able to dynamically load the right labels, they should be able to do this.
3. It should be easy to contribute translations to the project.
4. It should be easy to maintain the project.

First of all, I transformed all the Javascript files to plain JSON files, such as this one.

Since, we still need the Javascript files, which load the labels of one particular language. The only way to keep this maintainable is to automate it. This is where Gulp comes in. Gulp is a node module aimed at automating development tasks like this. You use Gulp by writing a gulpfile, a NodeJS script which uses Gulp and Gulp plugins.
Here is the gulpfile, which I made for this project. It takes care of automatically generating the Javascript files, based on the JSON files, and of generating the right demo files. Since these generated files are also committed, people using the project don't need to do anything with Gulp. Only the people contributing the project have to use it, or even only the people maintaining the project.
Running the Gulp script is simple. I described it in the README.

Something which I still have to do is write a script (maybe as jQuery plugin) which can dynamically load and switch languages, by loading the JSON files (using jQuery).
I also want to add tests, so we can automatically verify which language files are incomplete. See also this issue.

[loudenvier]

Mark,
I'm working like a mad dog these past few months, that's why you great contribution isn't yet on the "official" repository... I've got to take a weekend to do the merge and digest this new (to me) technology, which is quite nice!

[marklagendijk]

That's ok. I know the feeling ;).