solvecraft/docs/localization.md

UI localization

SolidCraft embeds its translations and works offline. English, Arabic, Bosnian, Czech, Danish, German, English (UK), Spanish, Finnish, French, Galician, Hebrew, Croatian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Dutch, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Turkish, Ukrainian and Chinese are currently registered in crates/ui-egui/src/i18n.rs. Adding a language requires an embedded catalog and one registration there; the preferences selector and validation use the same registry.

The language preference is a registered locale ID, or system (the default on a first start): the app then matches the system's preferred locales — the OS locale on desktop, navigator.languages in the browser, read with the sys-locale crate — against the registry: exact tag, then base language, then English (match_system_tags in crates/ui-egui/src/i18n.rs). A saved specific language always wins, so existing users keep their choice. In tests and scenarios the system's language is English, so they read the same words on every PC.

Messages

assets/locales/en.json defines stable message IDs and English fallback text. Keep IDs when changing wording. Other catalogs use the same IDs; missing messages fall back to English. Use app.tr("ui.preferences") for static messages and Locale::format for full sentences with named placeholders. Translate the entire sentence, including punctuation, so a translator can reorder its arguments. Placeholder values are inserted literally, even if a document name contains braces.

The English-label adapter (app.tr_label) supports existing engine and UI tables. It maps display text to a message ID, then uses the same catalog lookup. New UI messages should use stable IDs directly. The adapter does not change command IDs, model names, or scenario handles. When a table's English wording changes, update the corresponding English catalog entry too. Generated browser labels use named templates while their underlying model names stay intact.

Catalogs are parsed once and looked up through ordered maps. This is offline localization, not a claim of zero runtime overhead. The catalog tests check registered locale IDs, translation keys, and placeholder consistency. Run cargo xtask ci before submitting changes.

Terms

The glossary gives one English term for each idea, and each entry has a note for translators: what the term must not be confused with. Its "Words with more than one meaning" table lists the English words that need a separate catalogue entry for each meaning (Construction, Flat, Round, Normal, Gap, Clearance).

English (UK)

en-GB.json holds only the English messages whose spelling differs in UK English (Centre, Customise, Organisation, Licence, colours, …); every other message falls back to English. When an English message with a US spelling is added, add its UK spelling there too.

Coverage

A message a locale never received falls back to English silently, so a gap shows up only as a row that looks untranslated. Two guards catch that in the build:

• every_complete_catalog_carries_every_english_message — adding a key to en.json without giving it to a complete catalog fails the tests. English is the source catalog, Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese are delivered complete; Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian carry every English message today but are not held to it, so a new label may follow later in them; Danish, German, Spanish, Finnish, Galician, Italian, Korean, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, French, Ukrainian and Turkish are partial — their gaps fall back to English and are reported by cargo xtask i18n without failing the build. A new label needs en, ar, he, ja, zh, de and ko; Russian, French, Ukrainian and Malay may follow later.
• every_toolbar_tab_and_panel_is_in_the_english_catalog — tabs and panels reach the UI as bare source strings, resolved only by the English-label adapter, so a heading missing from en.json can never translate.

Command labels are the same case on a larger scale: every label in the engine's registry now has an entry under cmd.<command id>, and every_command_label_is_in_the_english_catalog fails if a command is added without one.

The context menu and the browser are the same case again, and they carry the most labels of all: every_menu_label_is_in_the_english_catalog opens every menu the app can reach, flips the state each conditional label branches on (origin shown, bodies locked, bodies hidden) so both branches are seen, and fails on any label the catalog has never seen. Unit symbols are left out of the sweep: mm is mm in every language, so they are not prose to translate. The sweep also asserts it keeps reaching a broad set of labels, so it cannot pass by finding nothing.

cargo xtask i18n prints the same picture across every locale — which messages each one is missing and which command labels English cannot translate. --check turns it into a non-zero exit for CI. --add-missing writes each uncovered label into en.json under cmd.<command id>, with the English label as its text, so the label adapter can find it and only the translations are left to do. One key per distinct label: two commands that share a label (Trim, Extend) must not both claim it, or the English-text lookup would silently pick one.

Rendering and coverage

The Italian catalog uses original translations of SolidCraft's English messages, not text extracted from commercial CAD software. Its core terminology is Schizzo (Sketch), Estrusione (Extrude), Raccordo (Fillet), Smusso (Chamfer), Corpo (Body), Componente (Component) and Vincolo (Constraint). Draft geometry is Sformo, while a report draft is Bozza; Counterbore is Lamatura and Countersink is Svasatura. Established technical terms such as Loft, Sweep, Spline and Offset remain unchanged. Command IDs, shortcuts, file formats, units and user-provided names are not translated.

The Bosnian (bs, Bosanski), Croatian (hr, Hrvatski) and Serbian (sr, Српски) catalogs are original translations kept in step: Bosnian and Croatian are ijekavian in Latin script, Serbian is ekavian in Cyrillic. They share Skica (Sketch), Ograničenje (Constraint), Kota (Dimension), Ekstrudiraj (Extrude), Zaobljenje (Fillet), Skošenje (Chamfer), Niz (Pattern) and Spoj (Joint), and follow each standard where it differs: Tijelo/Tijelo/Telo (Body), Ravan/Ravnina/Ravan (Plane), Tačka/Točka/Tačka (Point), Ivica/Brid/Ivica (Edge), Ugao/Kut/Ugao (Angle), Rupa/Provrt/Rupa (Hole), Sačuvaj/Spremi/Sačuvaj (Save). A timeline feature is Operacija in Bosnian and Serbian and Značajka in Croatian; the Browser panel is Stablo modela, so it is never confused with a web browser (preglednik/pregledač); the undo history is Historija/Povijest/Istorija and the timeline Vremenska traka. In Serbian, brand and file names, acronyms, units, key names and placeholders stay in Latin script inside the Cyrillic text. Command IDs, shortcuts, file formats, units and user-provided names are not translated.

The Finnish catalog (fi, shown as Suomi) uses Luonnos (Sketch), Kappale (Body), Piirre (timeline Feature), Rajoite (Constraint), Mitta (Dimension), Pyöristys (Fillet), Viiste (Chamfer), Pursotus (Extrude) and Pyöräytys (Revolve); a design is a malli and an AI model a tekoälymalli. Draft is Päästö, Flat Pattern is Levityskuva, Hem is Huulos, and Counterbore/Countersink are Upotus/Kartioupotus. Camera and view angles are Nyökkäys (pitch), Kääntö (yaw) and Kallistus (roll); a saved render shot is a Kuvakulma. Finnish puts a space before % (50 %). Command IDs, shortcuts, file formats, units and user-provided names stay unchanged.

The Norwegian Bokmål catalog (nb, shown as Norsk bokmål) uses Skisse (Sketch), Kropp (Body), Funksjon (timeline Feature), Binding (Constraint), Avrunding (Fillet) and Fas (Chamfer). Ground/Unground are Fest posisjon/Frigjør posisjon, Draft is Slippvinkel, Flat Pattern is Utbretting, and Counterbore/Countersink are Sylindrisk forsenkning/Konisk forsenkning. Capture Position is Registrer posisjon, while sketch snapping is Punktfangst. Loft, Sweep, Spline and Offset remain technical terms. Command IDs, shortcuts, file formats, units and user-provided names stay unchanged.

One immutable Locale type handles all translations. Table widgets without an app reference use a render scope that restores the previous locale when it exits, including nested renders. Standalone translated panels enter the same scope. Measure rendered text to size custom widgets; UTF-8 byte lengths do not describe their displayed width.

The desktop host tries system CJK fonts across Windows, macOS and Linux, the Flatpak host font folders (/run/host/fonts, /run/host/user-fonts), the folders listed in SOLIDCRAFT_FONT_DIRS and an optional CRAFT_FONTS_DIR font pack, and skips files that cannot be parsed. Chinese uses its own fallback chain after the general CJK font: many Japanese CJK fonts (Hiragino Gothic, Meiryo, Yu Gothic) match the CJK font search but lack simplified characters, so a second fallback found by the Chinese font-name list (PingFang, Microsoft YaHei, Noto Sans CJK SC, …) covers them per glyph. No fonts are redistributed in native desktop distribution packages; native builds rely entirely on existing operating system fonts or craft-fonts.

In the browser, solidcraft-web ships self-hosted script fonts (SIL OFL 1.1) in the web distribution artifacts only, loaded asynchronously from the same origin without contacting any external CDNs or third-party servers:

• Japanese (and Hangul-less Korean UI for now): ./fonts/BIZUDPGothic-Regular.ttf
• Simplified Chinese (zh): ./fonts/CraftUI-SC.otf (a locale-glyph subset of Noto Sans SC, renamed under the OFL so it does not use the reserved name Noto)
• Traditional Chinese (zh-TW): ./fonts/CraftUI-TC.otf (same for Noto Sans TC)

A CJK interface language fetches the matching face on demand. With any other interface language, the first time Japanese text (kana, kanji or full-width forms in a design name, file name, body name or typed text) is drawn, the Japanese face is fetched (#720). A session that never shows such text downloads no script font. If the needed face fails to load, the web interface shows English for that session only to prevent missing glyphs (tofu); the saved language preference is kept, so the next visit tries again. Korean Hangul coverage on the web remains follow-up work.

Right-to-left text

egui 0.36 shapes each run of one font with harfrust, so a run of Hebrew letters is drawn right to left, but it has no bidirectional layout: the runs of a line (words, spaces, numbers, punctuation) are placed left to right in the order they are stored. A Hebrew sentence stored in reading order would show its words in the wrong order and its punctuation on the wrong side. crate::bidi runs the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (the unicode-bidi crate, UAX #9) over every message of a catalog that has right-to-left text, once, when the catalog is first used, and Locale::text returns the order egui needs: the runs of the line in display order, brackets inside right-to-left text mirrored, and the letters of each Hebrew run left in reading order for the shaper to reverse. Each line is its own paragraph and takes its direction from its first strong letter, so English fallback text is unchanged. hebrew_messages_land_on_screen_in_display_order lays messages out with a real Hebrew font and checks where the glyphs land.

Arabic takes the same path. Its letters join, which the shaper does from the font's own tables, so each Arabic word is one run: the Arabic font comes after the Latin interface font, which keeps the spaces, digits and Latin text, and it is the first fallback for an Arabic UI (Segoe UI, Tahoma or Arial on Windows; SF Arabic, Geeza Pro, Damascus or Tahoma on macOS; Noto Sans or Naskh Arabic, KACST One or DejaVu Sans on Linux; NotoSansArabic-Regular.ttf in CRAFT_FONTS_DIR). Write Arabic messages with Western digits, which keep their left-to-right order inside the sentence. arabic_messages_land_on_screen_in_display_order checks the word order on screen.

Placeholders are kept whole where they stand, so format substitutes values into the display-order text and a value keeps the order it has: a number, a file name, a label that is already in display order. Translators write normal Hebrew in reading order; they never add directional marks. When a prefix letter joins a Latin word or a placeholder, use the maqaf (ב־{name}, ל־STEP), which is a Hebrew letter to the algorithm, not an ASCII hyphen.

This relies on Hebrew letters and the spaces and punctuation between them coming from different fonts (the bundled IBM Plex Sans has no Hebrew), which is how the default fonts are set up; an interface font that covers both Hebrew and Latin puts a whole line in one run and can reverse it. What this does not do yet: the layout is not mirrored (the browser stays on the left, labels stay left-aligned), and a message egui wraps onto several lines keeps the order of the whole string, so its lines read bottom to top. Names people type in Hebrew are shown as stored. The desktop host appends a system Hebrew font (Arial Hebrew or SF Hebrew on macOS, Segoe UI or Arial on Windows, Noto Sans Hebrew or DejaVu Sans on Linux); the web build has no Hebrew font yet, so a Hebrew interface shows empty boxes there.

The current messages support named substitution, not locale-specific plural selection, number/date formatting, right-to-left layout mirroring, or shaping for joining scripts such as Arabic. Add those capabilities when introducing messages or languages that need them; use an established message formatter for plural rules instead of adding language branches to panels. The catalogs cover the UI surfaces introduced by this PR, not every engine error or every newer command dialog.