Thanks! I was surprised when they were back to French, as I think we translated most everything way back when we started. Let me know when I should do something more with this, or if there are other translations we need to update.

Minor clarification to avoid double-work: is F41712984 a mockup? (or, is that online somewhere?) Thanks!

No, it's not a mockup. Everything was working fine before. The tabs were showing in Swedish before.

Everything related to the translation of Wikimini was organized here: https://lab.wikimini.org/wiki/Translation

The custom system messages that we needed (ex: the custom header tabs) were added to Wikimini through a custom extension that were created especially for that purpose. I forgot the name we gave to this extension, but I think it was something like "wikimini-messages" or "wikimini-system-messages" or something similar. Sorry, I do not have access to the server anymore. Actually, I don't know why an extension was created for this, because it is my understanding that we could have added these new custom system messages directly to the database (adding new "MediaWiki:ThisIsMyCustomSystemMessage" through the MediaWiki interface. Not sure about this).

I 've seen that some work had been recently done on the Wikimini skin (see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T320911). The header tabs are based on Javascript. Maybe the skin was calling the correct JS based on the user language before, and maybe a change was made on this aspect? Not sure...

Thanks for the precious details. I see now.

Premising that we have some extensions in the quarantine directory like "secure include" etc. so this is probably totally relevant (T331153)...

Anyway, the module was loaded in this way:

if ( WIKIMINI_PROJECT_UID === 'sv' ) {
        $out->addModules( array( 'swiffy.sv.js' ) );
} else {
        $out->addModules( array( 'swiffy.fr.js' ) ) ;
}

$out->addModules( array( 'skins.wikimini.js' ) );
$out->addModules( array( 'skins.wikimini.js2' ) );

And this is the skin registration:

 "swiffy.sv.js": {
        "scripts": [
                "resources/js/sv/swiffy-runtime-7.3.js",
                "resources/js/sv/swiffy-object.js"
        ],
        "position": "top",
        "dependencies": [

        ]
},
"swiffy.fr.js": {
        "scripts": [
                "resources/js/swiffy-runtime.js",
                "resources/js/fr/swiffy-object.js"
        ],
        "position": "top",
        "dependencies": [

        ]
},

Now. If I understand correctly the "Google Swiffy" legacy logic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Swiffy

The file swiffy-object.js contains a "somehow not readable but structured" eset of instructions to run the full animation loop, and other things, like strings (!) But, I was not able to find there the exact French strings that are shown on the sv version. Instead I somehow see them in the fr version that are online there.

So I'm on a dead end at the moment and this makes me frustrated since I would like to help more this beautiful project.

If - maybe thanks to this - anybody here have now ANY memory about how internationalization (i18n) was implemented, feel free to share and you will dramatically boost this activity. And I will offer you a pizza almost immediately.

Hi,

All the new custom system messages (see on the Lab) that we needed for the project were added to Wikimini with the help of an extension. This extension was created especially and only for this purpose, and its name is: WikiminiLanguage.

The text elements of the JS animated banner (previously built in Flash) are listed on this page: https://lab.wikimini.org/wiki/Translation/Other_elements/Flash_banner (<-- This page was used to help with translating). I don't know if these text elements were also being added through the WikiminiLanguage extension (as new System Messages), or if they were simply put directly into the swf/JS files.

In the HTML source code of the pages https://fr.wikimini.org and https://sv.wikimini.org we can see:

On FR:

mw.loader.load(["mediawiki.page.startup","mmv.head","ext.uls.init","ext.visualEditor.desktopArticleTarget.init","swiffy.fr.js","skins.wikimini.js"]);});

On SV:

mw.loader.load(["mediawiki.page.startup","mmv.head","ext.uls.init","ext.visualEditor.desktopArticleTarget.init","swiffy.sv.js","skins.wikimini.js"]);});

So everything seems OK.

But when inspecting this JS animated element (using Google Chrome) and showing the "Sources" tab (Chrome Developer Tools), I saw these differences:

On Wikimini SV we can see both the swiffy.fr and swiffy.sv. I don't know why.

Sorry if this doesn't solve the problem, but maybe it helps understand what's happening. And it's important to remember that this was working before.

Assuming this is about my fork of the Wikimini skin (ping T356324 etc.) ...

This seems to be because /resources/js/wikimini.js (a part of the skins.wikimini.js2 ResouceLoader module) loads the RL module swiffy.fr.js inline unconditionally if the HeaderState cookie is present. Changing the module's lang code on the offending line manually from fr to sv results in different JS errors than the ones we're used to (T356312), IIRC because the French code uses an older version of Swiffy than what the Swedish code tries to use.
I'm not sure why the module is loaded inline (I didn't introduce that code, it was already there prior to my changes) but I *think* it might've been needed? Ideally, as per SkinWikimini.php, if the LocalSettings.php (or equivalent) configuration file for the Swedish site has define( 'WIKIMINI_PROJECT_UID', 'sv' ); the Swedish Swiffy code is loaded, otherwise the French is; but as we can clearly see, it's not working right now as intended.

Anyway, Swiffy is a HUGE tech debt burden and IIRC its license is dubious and maybe not even really free enough and I strongly suggest phasing it out at the earliest possible opportunity. It'd allow fixing T356312, too, even. :-)

Hopefully fixed with https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/ashley/mediawiki-skins-Wikimini/-/commit/f2dbec0f6f5e8b73505559156d43d37765afaff0 ; note that it relies on the content language (on the JS file) so sticking ?uselang=sv to the URL on the French site won't load the Swedish code, and likewise, appending ?uselang=fr won't load the French code on the Swedish site. If the language code is neither fr or sv, the French (fr) code is used as a fallback. Oh, and as per SkinWikimini.php, the Swedish site's configuration file is assumed to have define( 'WIKIMINI_PROJECT_UID', 'sv' ); in it but as per my inline comment on that file, changing that is easy enough.