Allow localization of the documentation

[psychoslave]

Problem or new feature

Currently the documentation seems to be structured with only a single locale available. As localization of the language itself are available, providing the facilities to localize the reference documentation.

Suggestions

• the project should provide a structure that allows localization
• the project should document the process to translate the documentation
• the website should allow to easily switch from one locale to an other
• one language can have multiple local variation: let’s keep that in mind upfront
• the documentation should be translatable even in languages which don’t have any Raku localization

[coke]

@finanalyst is already working on this project, tagging him

[finanalyst]

@psychoslave The deployment of Raku docs with multilingual UI to an official URL is underway. Waiting for the relevant container to be run.
For a non-official deployment, see my new raku site
The deployment uses a new software stack called Elucid8 with the sandpit repo containing most of the doc-website development.

Currently working on a new tool to add a language to the UI list & modify existing terms. Current list is a proof of concept.

The work on adding new human languages will start as soon as I have finished other Raku tasks.

Main goals

• UI language to be orthogonal to content language (eg. a Japanese speaker can look at the English text without the navigation buttons all changing to English)
• Switch between languages will be at section level, not document level (most systems will switch language, but start at the top of the page in the new language)
• URLs for each language to be in the destination language, not in some cryptic English (take a look at the URLs of the Raku documentation system to see Unicode URLs for maths functions).
• Adding a language can be done using AI for the first draft, which is highlighted to show first-language editor has not looked at it)
• When the English canonical text is changed, the relevant block in all the translated texts are highlighted, allowing for language maintainers to focus only on changes and not have to find the change each time.

To achieve these goals, the whole documentation management system has been re-engineered. The specification of RakuDoc, which is the markup Raku documentation is written in, has been updated to allow for language synchronisation.

Lots of work left to create the tools. Any help would be gratefully accepted

[psychoslave]

Looks all awesome work @finanalyst, thanks for that. If you have a link with process to contribute, I might have a look, though for now I should rather focus on the Raku localization already dented.