Is this a bug or am I doing it wrong? (trans tag)

[Some Developer]

In the documentation it is quite clear that the following syntax is
correct in templates:

{% load i18n %}

{% trans "my_string" as blah_string %}

{{ blah_string }}

etc etc.

This works fine if the original trans tag is inside a block but then the
blah_string variable is only valid within that block. If you place the
trans tag in a global position (outside of any blocks) the blah_string
variable does not work when you try and use it in a block (that is any
block). I am using Django 1.4.2 and think this behaviour is somewhat
strange given the documentation for this particular feature. Surely you
should be able to declare the trans tag outside of any block as the
chances are that you will want to use the blah_string variable in more
than one block (I often have three or four blocks per page for various
things).

So is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?

[Some Developer]

Any comments on this at all? I'm still not entirely sure if this
behaviour is intentional or not.

[Tom Evans]

Templates have scope, so yes, this is expected. Any nodes in a derived
template that aren't {% block %} or inside a {% block %} tag are
ignored or not output*.

An alternative would be to pass a list or dictionary of shared
translations to the template.

Cheers

Tom

* I must admit, I don't know precisely how template rendering handles
this. Certain tags, eg loading tag libraries will work fine. Any tag
that outputs anything will not, and any tag that sets things in the
context will not be in scope in other blocks.

[Some Developer]

Thanks for the reply.

I have to admit to finding this behaviour both counter-intuitive and
somewhat perplexing.

This use case in particular would benefit greatly from allowing a
variable to be declared in a global scope and used throughout a specific
template. I'm not suggesting that global variables be inherited by
derived templates mearly that you can have global variables in
individual templates.

I guess I'll have to go with the list or dictionary approach although
I'm not that happy about it as it feels like a bit of a hack to get
round a problem that really shouldn't exist.