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pagerite/docs/localization.md
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# Localization
Pages are served in the visitor's language based on a `?lang=` query
parameter or the `Accept-Language` header.
- **Phase 1 (implemented):** negotiation, URL scheme, caching, rendering
plumbing. Translations are consumed through a stub interface; the database
still holds only the original language.
- **Phase 2 (implemented):** gettext-style fragment storage in the
database — machine-translated chunks plus user override patches, assembled
at render time. Storage details in `docs/migrate.md`.
## Phase 1: negotiation and URLs
### Language selection
Deliberately simple — **q-values are ignored**:
- All known `Accept-Language` implementations send the header **in order of
preference**, so we parse it as an ordered list and never reorder.
- Selection rule (`select_language` in `pagerite/i18n.py`):
1. If `?lang=<tag>` is present, use it (if a translation exists; otherwise
fall through to header logic).
2. If the article's original language appears anywhere in the header list,
use the **original**. Rationale: an AI translation is strictly worse
than the original for anyone who has that language configured at all
(e.g. `fi-FI, fi, en-US, en` gets English, not machine-translated
Finnish).
3. Otherwise walk the header list in order and use the first language for
which a translation exists.
4. Fall back to the original.
Region tags normalize to their base subtag (`fi-FI``fi`).
### URLs: pretty for users, indexable for search engines
- Canonical URLs stay pretty (`/some-page`). Each language version is
addressable as `/some-page?lang=fi` so search engines can index them.
- `<link rel="canonical">` names the **actually served language**: the plain
URL when serving the original (for SEO the non-query URL means the
article's own language), `?lang=xx` when serving a translation — however
the language was arrived at (query or header).
- `<link rel="alternate" hreflang="…">` entries follow the canonical
directly (before the social meta tags) and are the same set on every
page — the site-wide configured languages (`translate_langs`, which the
translator works to fill in): `x-default` first, pointing at the plain
autodetecting URL, then every language explicitly with `?lang=`, the
default language included.
- The override sticks for the session of clicks: a page requested with
`?lang=` replicates the query onto the navigation links it renders (nav,
sidebar, cards, brand — in-article links are content and stay as
authored), so plain clicks and no-JS navigation keep the language.
pagerite.js additionally strips the query from the address bar via
`history.replaceState` (pretty, shareable URLs), remembers the language,
and adds it to every internal fetch that lacks one (preloads,
fetch-navigations, history traversals); history entries stay query-less.
- A full page refresh or a shared link resets to automatic selection (header
only). This gives a clean one-time override without cookies.
### Response correctness
- Content responses carry `Vary: accept-language` (added to the existing
`accept-encoding` vary).
- `_cached_body` and the page ETag include the **selected language** (not the
raw header, which would blow up the cache key space) and the **replicated
link language**: a `?lang=fi` render and a header-selected Finnish render
of the same page differ in their navigation links, so they are cached as
separate variants.
- `<html lang="…">` reflects the served language.
### Rendering
- The translated Markdown goes through the same `markdown.render` pipeline.
- Navigation/sidebar titles come from the translation's title map, with
per-node fallback to the original title (a partially translated tree must
still render).
- Category placeholder pages (the 404s for content-less labels) select a
language like content pages, but over the **subtree's** combined
availability (`subtree_languages`) — they have no chunks of their own;
the heading, navigation and card text localize from the title map and
the target articles' translations.
- Card descriptions and cover picks run on the target article's hybrid
Markdown where that page is available in the served language, with
per-card fallback to the original.
- Fixed UI strings ("Not Found" etc.) and the editor UI stay English for now.
- The markdown typographer (SmartyPants) is English-centric; per-language
typographer options are a possible follow-up, not blocking.
## Phase 2: fragment-based translation storage (implemented)
Phase 1 assumed whole-page translated Markdown delivered from outside. The
refined model is gettext-style: an article has **one primary version** (its
`content`, in its own language) plus, per target language, **machine
fragments** (translated chunks of Markdown) and **user patches** (minimal
editor overrides). Both are stored in the database and assembled into the
served Markdown at render time.
### The scenario this must handle
1. Article written in English.
2. Machine-translated into Spanish → fragments stored.
3. Editor fixes one Spanish paragraph and changes a link elsewhere to point
at a Spanish resource → user patch hunks stored.
4. English article edited → the edited chunk's key changes; its Spanish
fragment no longer matches.
5. Page requested before the machine translation refreshes → served as a
**hybrid**: old fragments for unchanged chunks, plain English for the
edited chunk. User patches are attempted against this hybrid, best effort,
each hunk independently: the text fix is stale (its search text no longer
exists) and silently skipped; the link change still applies even though
the link sits in the now-English paragraph.
6. Machine translation refreshes → full Spanish again, with both patch hunks
applying.
### Chunks
`chunk_markdown(markdown)` splits the source into block-level chunks —
blank-line-separated blocks: headings, paragraphs, code fences (kept whole),
list blocks, tables, HTML blocks. A chunk's identity is its **source text**,
gettext-msgid style:
```python
chunk_key = blake3(normalize(chunk_text)).digest(9) # bytes; base64 at the JSON level
```
(`normalize`: strip trailing whitespace per line, collapse surrounding blank
lines — so whitespace-only source edits don't invalidate translations.)
Consequences:
- Editing the English source invalidates exactly the edited chunks; all
other fragments keep applying. Stale fragments are simply never referenced
again and can be garbage-collected lazily (or left; they are tiny).
- No explicit "source version" bookkeeping is needed — staleness falls out
of the keys.
### User patches
Editors always edit **full Markdown** in the existing editor UX — never
fragments. When editing a translated view (`?lang=es`), the editor is loaded
with the *current hybrid Markdown*; on save, the server computes a minimal
diff against that hybrid and stores it as a patch:
```python
class Patch(msgspec.Struct, omit_defaults=True):
"""One editing session's overrides, applied independently per hunk."""
hunks: list[tuple[str, str]] = [] # (search, replace) on hybrid Markdown
```
Hunks are produced from `difflib.SequenceMatcher` on the hybrid vs. the
edited text at block granularity: each `replace`/`delete`/`insert` opcode
becomes one `(search, replace)` pair, with the preceding block's tail as
left context for `insert` (pure inserts have empty search context otherwise).
Application is dead simple:
```python
def apply_patch(hybrid: str, patch: Patch) -> str:
for search, replace in patch.hunks:
if search and search in hybrid:
hybrid = hybrid.replace(search, replace, 1)
# missing search text = stale hunk -> silently skipped
return hybrid
```
Per-hunk independence is the robustness property from the scenario: a stale
text fix does not block a still-valid link change. Patches are stored as an
ordered list and applied in order.
### Storage
Full storage design and the `migrate_v3` restructuring live in
`docs/migrate.md`. The short version, as it concerns this document:
- Originals **and** translations are content-addressed text chunks in flat
stores: `Data.chunks: dict[bytes, str]` and
`Data.trans: dict[bytes, dict[str, str]]` (chunk hash → lang → text) —
path-independent, so repeated paragraphs and menu titles are translated
once and article moves touch nothing. `Node.chunks: list[bytes]` gives
each article its order.
- `Node` gains **`language: str = ""`**, inherited down the tree like
`banner` (empty = nearest ancestor, front page last, site default `en`
final). `select_language` and `<html lang>` use the resolved value instead
of the global `ORIGINAL_LANGUAGE` constant.
- **Known weakness:** changing a page's (or subtree's) `language` after
translations exist mis-keys everything — translations are keyed by
*source* chunks, so old entries silently stop matching and user patches
(searching for old-hybrid text) mostly go stale. That is acceptable:
the orphaned data is harmless and translations regenerate. We do not
migrate translations across a language change.
- Article paths are stored and keyed **without leading slashes**
(`"docs/setup"`, front page `""`); slashes are added only in hrefs.
### Render pipeline (the phase-1 `get_translation` stub, now real)
```python
def get_translation(path, lang, data) -> Translation | None:
if lang not in node.langs:
return None
hybrid = "\n\n".join(
chunks[h] if h in node.no_trans else trans.get(h, {}).get(lang, chunks[h])
for h in node.chunks
)
for patch in data.patches.get(f"{path}:{lang}", []):
hybrid = apply_patch(hybrid, patch)
return Translation(markdown=hybrid, titles=title_map(data, lang))
```
- Availability is an article-level index: `node.langs: dict[lang, True]`,
maintained by the translation writers (translator job, patch saves) in the
same transaction as their data writes — rendering and language selection
never probe the `trans` store chunk by chunk. A stale key is benign (the
"translation" just renders as the original).
- `titles` for nav/sidebar/cards: each node's translated title is
`trans.get(hash(node.title), {}).get(lang)` with per-node fallback — one
dict lookup per nav item at render time.
- Cache invalidation: writes to `chunks` / `trans` / `patches` (translator,
editor saves) call `_invalidate_pages()`, same as content writes.
### Editor flow
The page editor has a language picker (flag + name; the same
country-flag-icons set as the analytics visitor cells) listing the primary
language and the union of the page's translations (`node.langs`) and the
site-wide `translate_langs`. It opens in the language the page was served
in (`<html lang>`). A note under the toolbar states the blast radius:
edits to the primary language re-chunk the original (invalidating the
affected translation fragments everywhere); edits to a translation stay
local to that language.
- WS `open` with a `lang` returns the effective **hybrid** Markdown and
title for that language (ungated by `node.langs` — a language without
any fragments yet starts from the original text), plus the language
metadata (`lang`, `primary_lang`, `langs`, `translate_langs`).
- The editor keeps a **shadow copy** of the Markdown it opened. WS `save`
with `lang` sends it as `base`; the server diffs `base` → submitted text
(`make_patch`) and appends a `Patch`. Diffing against the shadow (rather
than the current hybrid) keeps hunks correct when the original or the
machine translation moved under an open editor; application against the
then-current hybrid stays best-effort per hunk, as designed.
- A changed **title** on a translated save becomes a fragment in
`Data.trans` keyed by the original title's chunk hash — the same storage
as machine title translations. An untouched title field (holding the
served translation) is not sent, so saving never freezes a stale machine
title into an override.
- Saving never deletes; a translation additionally cannot be emptied (that
would render as a blank page in that language).
- The live preview renders the version being edited, whichever language
the page itself was loaded in (the render is just the edited Markdown +
title). A translated save keeps that preview in place — re-fetching the
page would come back in the header-selected language.
- Saving the primary-language version re-chunks the submitted Markdown and
updates `Data.chunks` / `node.chunks` — only genuinely new text lands in
the kanta change diff (see docs/migrate.md).
### Translator service API
An external machine-translation service connects over WebSocket at
`/_translate/{key}` — deliberately **not** under `/_api`: the SSO
forward-auth does not cover that route, and the key in the path is the
access control. The key is `Data.translate_key`, generated once at startup
and surfaced to the admin in `GET /_api/settings` as `translate_key`. A
wrong or empty key rejects the handshake (close-before-accept → HTTP 403).
Frames are JSON-encoded tagged msgspec structs (`pagerite/translate.py`;
`bytes` fields ride as base64):
- `{"type": "hello", "langs": [...]}` — client greeting announcing its
**capabilities**: the language codes its model can produce (normalized
to base subtags; `en`/empty dropped).
- `{"type": "job", "lang", "key", "text", "path", "kind"}` — server push:
ONE fragment to translate (an article title or a chunk).
- `{"type": "result", "lang", "key", "text"}` — client reply: the
translation of the connection's current job, matching it by (lang, key).
Which languages get translated is **server-configured**:
`Data.translate_langs` (presence-key dict, read/set via `/_api/settings`
as `translate_langs`; no editing UI yet). The dispatcher offers a
connection jobs only in `wanted ∩ capable`; a connection without overlap
simply stays idle.
Dispatch semantics (all in app.py):
- **One job at a time per connection** — the next job is sent only after
the current one's result. Clients wanting parallelism open multiple
connections (e.g. several `scripts/translator.py` instances).
- Pending work is derived from the `trans` store
(`translate.pending_items`) minus the items in flight on any connection,
so a **disconnect requeues** that connection's in-flight item and it is
offered to any free capable connection.
- Dispatch re-runs on every relevant event: Hello, result, disconnect and
content change (`_invalidate_pages()` schedules it, so the pass runs
after the writing transaction commits).
- A result with no job in flight, a mismatched (lang, key), a duplicate
hello, or any malformed frame closes the socket with a protocol error.
Results are stored into `trans` in one transaction and set
`node.langs[lang]` on every article they touch (shared chunks make several
pages gain a language from one fragment). Unknown keys are stored anyway
and re-storing overwrites — results are idempotent.
### Explicitly out of scope for phase 2
- The machine translation itself: the API above moves fragments in and out;
the translating is external. `scripts/translator.py` is the reference
client (Seed-X-PPO-7B only — its 28 languages are the ceiling).
- Garbage collection of orphaned chunks/translations (see docs/migrate.md).
- sitemap.xml per-language entries; translated UI chrome; per-language
typographer options; multi-locale date/number formatting.