Issue with drag & drop of translated element into untranslated gridelement

[mkrappitz]

We have the following language setup in TYPO3 12.4.27 and gridelements 12.0.0 (TER version) and php 8.2.27 on a Mittwald hosting:

languages:
  -
    title: EN
    enabled: true
    languageId: 0
    base: /en/
    typo3Language: default
    locale: en_GB.UTF-8
    iso-639-1: en
    navigationTitle: English
    hreflang: en
    direction: ''
    flag: gb
    websiteTitle: ''
  -
    title: DE
    enabled: true
    base: /de/
    typo3Language: de
    locale: de_DE.UTF-8
    iso-639-1: de
    websiteTitle: ''
    navigationTitle: Deutsch
    hreflang: de
    direction: ''
    fallbackType: strict
    fallbacks: ''
    flag: de
    languageId: 3

There is some strange behaviour when working with a translated content element and an untranslated gridelement.

Initial steps to reproduce:

• Create a new page in EN and translate it to DE.
• Create a new standard (for example) text content element in EN and translate it to DE with connected mode.
• Create a new gridelement with minimum one column in EN on the same page.

Then the following stuff happens, if you move the translated text element into the grid element in the default EN language, this is how it looks after the drag & drop - first all fine:

But if you just refresh the current view in the page module, it looks like this, the DE translation of the text element "jumped" into the default language grid element:

If you then try to "fix" this by translating the grid element to DE in connected mode, you then have 2 DE translations of the text element, one in the default language gridelement, one in the translated language gridelement:

And in the frontend it even renders correctly in the default language, you only see the gridelement with the default language text element. But in the translated language you see the gridelement and both translated language text elements inside:

You can then finally "fix" that by deleting the superflous translated text element in the default language. Anyway this behaviour seems erratic to me and should be fixed, if this is something caused by gridelements.

[Bunnyfield]

Hi @mkrappitz - While I get that you are confused, I don't get some other things, which actually make me confused too:

How did you manage to move the German child element into the English grid container in the first place? This should not be possible AT ALL and actually be prevented by the core. If it is not, we have to find a way to fix this with Gridelements.

A basic rule of thumb has to be: Parent elements with a specific language must not contain children of any other language. - IMHO this should even apply to parent elements set to "language all", so that they can only contain child elements having "language alle" too, but I know this is currently broken in the core.

Another thing is: Why did you do it like that? The usual translation behaviour is to translate parent containers which will translate their children down the whole nested chain in one go, but not the other way around. Starting with child elements has to cause structural trouble, because there is important structure information missing.

Especially in connected mode this should not even be possible, because the default language controls the structure for each of the target languages. At least we came to those conclusions in the translation handling initiative, but we know that the core is conceptually broken in several places currently, which we want to fix in the long run.

[mkrappitz]

How did you manage to move the German child element into the English grid container in the first place? This should not be possible AT ALL and actually be prevented by the core. If it is not, we have to find a way to fix this with Gridelements.

I didn't move the German child element into the English grid container. I only moved the English text element into the English grid container by drag & drop (first screenshot). The second screenshot, where also the German child element is in the English grid container, was just me refreshing the page module after my drag & drop action. Somehow the German child element now got moved into the English grid container by I don't know what.

Another thing is: Why did you do it like that? The usual translation behaviour is to translate parent containers which will translate their children down the whole nested chain in one go, but not the other way around. Starting with child elements has to cause structural trouble, because there is important structure information missing.

This was a use case of a client. He had some translated content on an existing page, not being in grid elements. Then he started to structure it into grid elements afterwards, went the way shown in the screenshots and ran into this trouble. I think this is not a totally unusual use case. Of course I'm not sure, if this a fault of the core or gridelements. But even if it is a core issue, maybe it can be prevented by gridelements, as it can really mess up things in multilanguage projects. What do you think?

[mkrappitz]

Another info. If I do the same thing with EXT:container, this problem does not occur. Here the same actions as with gridelements:

The initial setup, a translated header element and an untranslated container:

Dragging the default language header element into the container:

Refreshing the page module, the translated header element is not visible anymore, which makes sense:

Translating the container - all good afterwards - the translated header element now shows in the translated container: