Use gettext based translations

[Nutomic]

That way translations could be done via weblate which should be much easier for contributors. Its also a good opportunity to finally upgrade our mdbook version.

https://crates.io/crates/mdbook-i18n-helpers

[Nutomic]

Gave this a try but this is not quite ready to use yet. The helper only allows building the book for a single language at a time, and doesnt include a language selector. So we should wait until those things are added before migrating.

google/mdbook-i18n-helpers#12

google/mdbook-i18n-helpers#13

[mgeisler]

Hi all, thanks for trying out mdbook-i18n-helpers!

The helper only allows building the book for a single language at a time,

This is a bit of a feature — instead of trying to hack on mdbook to teach it about the translations, we simply generate the translations one-by-one. We have ~18 translations for Comprehensive Rust 🦀 and this system works quite well for us.

One advantage of this: it's clear that the built-in mdbook search functionality is per-language. If I had somehow added all the translated Markdown files into a single src/ folder, then I would have had to do something to avoid having the search index cover all languages simultaneously 🙂

and doesnt include a language selector. So we should wait until those things are added before migrating.

You're right and I would like to package up a language selector! However, for now, we simply edit the theme/index.hbs as needed. Out of the 18 translations, only two are at a stage where we link them directly in the language selector (see the globe in the top-right of any published page).

Please open issues for any problems you run into if you try it out again. It's important for me that the plugins work in general and not just in my own special case 🙂