Translatable Blueprints

[adamziel]

How could one create an i18n-friendly Blueprint that creates a site equally friendly to French, English, German, Polish etc. audiences?

It could be solved at the Blueprint schema level. However, localizing may involve translating the content, using different images, setting dedicated site options etc. That sounds more like a completely separate Blueprint than a schema change.

Perhaps the solution is then a Blueprint meta-tool that reconciles a Blueprint template with a set of inputs and produces a localized input? It's similar to Helm and Kubernetes situation.

For example, this could be a blueprint.template.json

{
  "meta": {
    "parameters": {
      "locale": {
        "required": true,
        "type": "string"
      },
      "strings": {
        "type": "object"
      },
      "assets": {
        "type": "object"
      }
    }
  },
  "steps": [
    {
      "setSiteOptions": {
        "WPLANG": "{{ locale }}",
        "blogname": "{{ strings.site_title }}",
        "blogdescription": "{{ strings.site_tagline }}"
      }
    },
    {
      "createPost": {
        "postType": "page",
        "slug": "home",
        "title": "{{ strings.home_title }}",
        "content": "{{ strings.home_content }}",
        "featuredImage": "{{ assets.home_hero }}"
      }
    }
  ]
}

And this could be a blueprint-fr.input.json

{
  "locale": "fr_FR",
  "strings": {
    "site_title": "Mon site",
    "site_tagline": "Un exemple multilingue",
    "home_title": "Accueil",
    "home_content": "<p>Bienvenue sur le site.</p>"
  },
  "assets": {
    "home_hero": "./images/fr/home.jpg"
  }
}

And the tool would accept both of these, and create a final Blueprint.

This could also support additional steps from @akirk's https://akirk.github.io/playground-step-library/. Perhaps it could even be a way of supporting a Blueprint v2 schema with a v1 runtime?

[wojtekn]

@adamziel your template approach is interesting. I would challenge one assumption though: even with a templating system, localization often involves structural differences, not just string substitution.

Speaking of a real-life example, a Blueprint that sets up an e-commerce store may define different default pages for each language, based on local laws or market specifics. They wouldn't be just translations, but completely different resources.

If we want to make it robust, I would propose two more approaches:

• Simple: locale as a Blueprint config - let users prepare a separate Blueprint for each locale.
• Complex: overlay Blueprints - to allow preparing a localized Blueprint file that is defined on top of the original Blueprint, making it mergeable, letting users add/edit/delete original Blueprint content in the localized one.

Or maybe it could support both: templating for small differences and overlaying when the data differs.

[akirk]

The template could work here. I am a bit worried about files getting out of sync. What about a schema change to add a multi-layered object that can overwrite values in the rest of the file. Something like this:

{
  "$schema": "https://playground.wordpress.net/blueprint-schema.json",
  "siteOptions": {
    "blogname": "My Site",
    "blogdescription": "A multilingual example"
  },
  "steps": [
    {
      "step": "createPost",
      "postType": "page",
      "slug": "home",
      "title": "Home",
      "content": "<p>Welcome to the site.</p>",
      "featuredImage": "./images/en/home.jpg"
    }
  ],
  "locales": {
    "fr_FR": {
      "siteOptions": {
        "blogname": "Mon site",
        "blogdescription": "Un exemple multilingue"
      },
      "steps": [
        {
          "step": "createPost",
          "slug": "home",
          "title": "Accueil",
          "content": "<p>Bienvenue sur le site.</p>",
          "featuredImage": "./images/fr/home.jpg"
        }
      ]
    },
    "de_DE": {
      "siteOptions": {
        "blogname": "Meine Seite",
        "blogdescription": "Ein mehrsprachiges Beispiel"
      },
      "steps": [
        {
          "step": "createPost",
          "slug": "home",
          "title": "Startseite",
          "content": "<p>Willkommen auf der Seite.</p>",
          "featuredImage": "./images/de/home.jpg"
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

It would be backwards compatible and any value could be overwritten.