Bug 165307 - A mechanism for auto-localization of templates
Summary: A mechanism for auto-localization of templates
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LibreOffice (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
25.8.0.0 alpha0+
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
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Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Templates
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Reported: 2025-02-17 22:14 UTC by Eyal Rozenberg
Modified: 2025-02-18 09:11 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

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Description Eyal Rozenberg 2025-02-17 22:14:34 UTC
At the moments, (almost) all of our templates have:

* Text in English
* Left-to-Right text direction
* Horizontal line progression (i.e. unlike the default in some CJK contexts)
* Perhaps even content elements which are specific to English-using or to European countries.

Those four items are, in increasing order of difficulty, aspects which need to be localized for someone to use a template. Either the user has to localize that all themselves (each time or creating their own template); or we could offer localized templates (bundled / downloadable); or we could offer an automatic mechanism for localizing the templates.

Given infinite person-time for people of all locales, the ideal is probably hand-localized and community-reviewed templates that are maintained by local user groups. But this is not our reality... for which reason I suggest we consider introducing the auto-localization option. 

Note: I'm not suggesting that there be _no_ localized templates, just that, when one is unavailable, we try and generate one.

What does that mean? It could be pre-localization on TDF servers (or anywhere LO is built); or it could be on-the-fly localization based on the template's contents, and perhaps even additional data that's not displayed by LO but which could be placed in the template to guide localization.

The easiest thing would probably be the translation - of course, given an automatical translator of text. This may not exist on every user's system, but having something like that in library form is becoming more prevalent, and when it is present, could be used. Or - we could offer translations, as opposed to templates, of just the text.

Then there is the setting of text directions, of font families (but see bug 151215 and specifically Mike Kaganski's comment 19 there about defining fonts for many languages at once), and other aspects of style which may need localization (e.g. line heights, paper sizes, margins etc.).

Finally there is the matter of actual pieces of contents; but this is the hardest and the least generic (between different locales and between different templates), so let's put a bigger question mark on that for now.

I'll also note that we have some wizards, apparently, which are like semi-interactive "templates"; localizing those, or their effects, should perhaps be dealt with in other bugs. See bug 75218 for example.
Comment 1 Heiko Tietze 2025-02-18 09:11:20 UTC
It's a question to l10n and infra rather than UX.