Multilingual support (proposals and state of the question)

Multilingual support (proposals and state of the question)

[Juan Manuel Macías]

Hi all,

I would like to start a thread on this question, leaving some basic ideas and
sketches of my own, in case someone else wanted to join the discussion.

I think it would be nice if Org Mode offered consistent support (out of
the box) for multilingual documents. That is, those documents where
there is a main language and it is possible to toggle between a list of
others 'secondary' languages, in the LaTeX Babel way. Those documents
could be consistently exported to other formats with multilingual
support: LaTeX, of course, but also html, odt, etc.

What is your opinion?

I think Org documents should have three levels in multilingual management:

- Short text segments, something like an 'inline block' for other languages
- Blocks
- Sections

For short inline segments, IMHO and without the need to innovate, I
think an excellent candidate are the links defined with
org-link-set-parameters. For example:

Lorem ipsum [[lang:de][some text in German]] dolor sit amet

(For structures of this kind I found very interesting ideas here:
https://github.com/alhassy/org-special-block-extras)

As for blocks, I think of a hypothetical 'lang' block:

#+begin_lang el :variant polytonic
Some text in polytonic Greek...
#+end_lang

However, in a previous thread
(https://orgmode.org/list/87k0og8fss.fsf@list.aleks.bg/) Aleksandar
Dimitrov proposed an idea that seemed very suggestive, at least in
concept: add a ':lang' argument to the Org code blocks:

#+begin_src org :lang fr
Some text in french
#+end_src

And finally, for sections, you could think of a new property ':lang:'

* Header
  :PROPERTIES:
  :LANG: pt
  :END:

...

Best regards,

Juan Manuel 

Re: Multilingual support (proposals and state of the question)

[Denis Maier]

Am 17.05.2021 um 17:41 schrieb Juan Manuel Macías:
> Hi all,
> 
> I would like to start a thread on this question, leaving some basic ideas and
> sketches of my own, in case someone else wanted to join the discussion.
> 
> I think it would be nice if Org Mode offered consistent support (out of
> the box) for multilingual documents. That is, those documents where
> there is a main language and it is possible to toggle between a list of
> others 'secondary' languages, in the LaTeX Babel way. Those documents
> could be consistently exported to other formats with multilingual
> support: LaTeX, of course, but also html, odt, etc.
> 
> What is your opinion?
> 
> I think Org documents should have three levels in multilingual management:
> 
> - Short text segments, something like an 'inline block' for other languages
> - Blocks
> - Sections
> 
> For short inline segments, IMHO and without the need to innovate, I
> think an excellent candidate are the links defined with
> org-link-set-parameters. For example:
> 
> Lorem ipsum [[lang:de][some text in German]] dolor sit amet
> 
> (For structures of this kind I found very interesting ideas here:
> https://github.com/alhassy/org-special-block-extras)
> 
> As for blocks, I think of a hypothetical 'lang' block:
> 
> #+begin_lang el :variant polytonic
> Some text in polytonic Greek...
> #+end_lang
> 
> However, in a previous thread
> (https://orgmode.org/list/87k0og8fss.fsf@list.aleks.bg/) Aleksandar
> Dimitrov proposed an idea that seemed very suggestive, at least in
> concept: add a ':lang' argument to the Org code blocks:
> 
> #+begin_src org :lang fr
> Some text in french
> #+end_src

Why not add a :lang property to other blocks as well?
#+begin_quote :lang en
this is english.
#+end_quote

WDYT?

Denis

Re: Multilingual support (proposals and state of the question)

[Juan Manuel Macías]

Hi Denis,

Denis Maier writes:

> Why not add a :lang property to other blocks as well?
>
> #+begin_quote :lang en
> this is english.
> #+end_quote
>
> WDYT?
>
> Denis

It's an interesting possibility. However, I think that the advantage of
Org src blocks is that you can include anything you want, even quote
blocks. And you also have org-edit-special...

Best regards,

Juan Manuel