Translate the Terminal and Logs output

[ryanwelcher]

Why

The Terminal and the Logs were plain English in a translated window: the terminal's help and refusals, every line the setup, update and apply chains write there, the build watch and dev server lines, the Logs' tabs and empty-pane notes, and main's own lines from the trunk update, the pull request switch, the npm runner and the server start. This is the #627 batch of #622.

What changes

• Every line written to the Terminal or a Logs pane goes through __/_n/sprintf, with commands, paths, keys and file names passed in as %s. Each line is one or more whole sentences, so the terminal can show a translated line on its own.
• Sentences that were spliced together are written whole. The apply chain built "The ${noun} is ${verb}" and "${verb} — …" from five verb and noun pairs; it is now a table of whole sentences per pair (applyLines in watch-activity.cjs), the way applyDoneMessage in confirmations.cjs works. applyFinishMessage used to regex the English "— open the site to try it out." out of a line; the caller now passes the line without it. The switch progress (switch-progress.cjs), the setup's Status: ${phase}, main's Update failed during ${stage} and the npm "letting go" line each get one sentence per case.
• Inline markup (the hints under the terminal, the empty Logs panes) uses createInterpolateElement, with npm run build, help, Ctrl+C, package.json, src/, build/ and error_log() passed in as elements.
• The dev server's "see Help → Open App Log" takes the menu item as %s, from the same __('Open App Log') the menu uses (left over from Load the translation catalog in main, and translate the menu and dialog titles #634).
• Module-level constants became functions: COPY_BUTTON_LABELS, SETUP_END_MESSAGES and the setup status line move from index.jsx to confirmations.cjs as copyButtonLabel, setupEndMessage and setupStatusLine, where the suite can reach them; STALE_ASSETS and main's ENGINE_RETRY_NOTICE become functions too.

110 new strings. Not wrapped, per #622 or because the text is not ours: Git's own progress phases (Updating files 3/10), npm's and the server's output, the stub appendNpm buffer nothing shows, the 42% progress figure, and the lines owned by sibling batches (SKIP_INSTALL_MESSAGE and the dirty-tree errors are #626's in #636; the patch apply lines in main are #628's; the blocked-site errors are #629's).

How to test this

The new journeys cover both trays in the pseudo-locale. Run them from the repository root, on either platform:

npx playwright test --project=journeys tests/e2e/journeys/i18n.spec.js -g "Terminal is fully|Logs are fully"

Both fail without this change (checked by stashing src/ and rebuilding). The Terminal journey opens the tray on a built site, reads the help printed at start, types help and an unknown command, joins the terminal's rows into whole lines and checks every printed line starts with [, then scans the hints under it. The Logs journey scans the empty Build watch and Debug.log panes, starts the dev server with stubbed handlers so the watch starts and the server refuses, and scans the server's failure line, the watch's start and exit lines and the tab titles as they change.

What the journeys cannot reach: they stub IPC, so main's lines (trunk update, PR switch, npm runner, server start) never reach the screen in them, and neither do the apply, update and setup chains, which need a real install and build. Unit tests cover those in the pseudo-locale instead: watch-activity, update-handoff, dev-server-command, switch-progress, confirmations, trunk-update-fetch.integration and three in ipc-wiring (the server's start failure, the trunk update's failure lines and the engine retry notice). To see the chains on screen by hand (either platform, current head):

1. From the repository root, run npx electron . --lang=en-XA.
2. Open a built Core site, open the Terminal tray and type help.
   • Expected: every line except the $ prompt is accented and in brackets, and the help's descriptions still start in one column.
3. Click Update to latest trunk (in its pseudo-localised form) and let it run.
   • Expected: the lines the app writes ("Fetching latest trunk…", "Now on trunk as of …", "Running npm run build…", "Update complete — …") are bracketed; Git's and npm's own output is not.

What must not have happened: no English an English speaker sees has changed, apart from the one line break and the one plural named in Risks. All 132 journeys pass with their exact English strings, including terminal.spec.js, tray.spec.js, logs.spec.js, build-watch.spec.js and dev-server.spec.js.

Risks and limitations

• Two changes to the English, both forced by the rules: the help's last paragraph was one sentence broken over two lines with a \n, which a translated string cannot hold, so it is now two sentences on two lines ("…npm run build once." / "Run them here whenever…"); LONGEST_HELP_LINE in terminal.spec.js follows it. And the switch progress said "1 files"; with _n it says "1 file".
• Merge conflicts with the other open batches: Translate the pull request destination and GitHub sign-in #643, Translate the setup checklist and the trunk update banners #636 and the parallel Translate patch and pull request apply failures #628 and Translate ticket and branch notices and input errors #629 all append tests to the end of i18n.spec.js (Translate the Review & submit dialog #635 did too; this branch is rebased on it). Translate the setup checklist and the trunk update banners #636 also adds import { __ } to use-dev-server.jsx and sprintf to index.jsx's import, where this branch adds sprintf too; those lines will need a one-line resolution, whichever merges second.
• Main's PR-switch lines and npmLetGoLine in main.js are covered only by npm run i18n:pot extracting them and lint checking their comments; the trunk update, server start and engine retry lines have ipc-wiring tests.
• Still English in the terminal during an apply: the lines owned by Translate patch and pull request apply failures #628 (main's "Applying …" and the patch-apply.js lines) and Translate the setup checklist and the trunk update banners #626's SKIP_INSTALL_MESSAGE (in Translate the setup checklist and the trunk update banners #636). They land with those batches.
• The diff is about 870 lines, over the ~800 guideline. Most of it is the per-case sentence table and tests; it is one tray's worth of strings and did not split cleanly.
• Review: 3 [fix here], all fixed; 3 [follow-up], deferred (see the review outcome).

Related

Fixes #627. Part of #622. Follows #634 and #635.

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Design decisions and alternatives considered

• The help's columns. Each help line is one string, %s Show this help text, with the command padded into %s, so every printed line opens with the translated string's bracket and the descriptions still line up after the command column. The alternative, a translated description after an untranslated command, would leave each line starting in English.
• The apply sentences as a table, not a frame like "%1$s but the build failed": a translation cannot rely on "The patch is applied" fitting in front of "but". The two Restored lines share their English but have a _x context per noun, so a language with gendered participles can say them differently.
• "Start the build watch, or run %s in the Terminal." is its own sentence after the one saying the site still runs the old assets, instead of being copied into ten strings.
• Setup status per phase: main sends only cloning and done; each gets its own line and anything else says "Status update", where it used to print the code.
• Debug.log and Debug.log (%d) are wrapped so a translator can name the tab in their language; the file name in sentences is left as is.

Review outcome (required — see AGENTS.md)

3 [fix here] · 3 [follow-up]. All 3 [fix here] findings are fixed.

• 🟡 copyButtonLabel, setupStatusLine and setupEndMessage were branches choosing user-facing sentences inside index.jsx, which the suite cannot load. Fixed: moved to confirmations.cjs with a test in English and in the pseudo-locale.

• 🔵 engineRetryNotice was made a function so it is translated when shown, and nothing checked it. Fixed: an ipc-wiring test drives the engine retry in the pseudo-locale.

• 🔵 The Terminal journey dropped any line starting with [, so translated text followed by English would pass. Fixed: each line must be one bracketed string from its first character to its last.

• Follow-up: the apply flow in the terminal is still partly English (main's "Applying …" line, patch-apply.js, SKIP_INSTALL_MESSAGE). Those belong to Translate patch and pull request apply failures #628 and Translate the setup checklist and the trunk update banners #626 (Translate the setup checklist and the trunk update banners #636), not this batch.

• Follow-up: the five compiling sentences in applyLines repeat compilingMessage()'s text, on purpose, so each can be translated whole; the test now pins all five against compilingMessage().

• Follow-up: npmLetGoLine reads process.platform, so only one platform's branch runs in a test. The split was already inline before this branch; injecting the platform is a separate change.

• One review note was checked and not taken: it said the renderer no longer imports switch-progress.cjs, but index.jsx still does, so that module's header comment stays.

• Review: completed. Fresh agent context (Explore subagent given the diff and the review instructions), head c7a1ba8 / base 9fd167e. Lint clean, npm test passing, read-only, so it did not run the journeys.

• Since review: c7a1ba8 → 274bb2d. The review fixes above, then a rebase onto trunk e94f507 after Translate the Review & submit dialog #635 merged (only i18n.spec.js conflicted: both appended tests). Checked by the authoring session, not re-reviewed by a fresh context: npm run lint clean, npm test 2044 pass / 0 fail, all 132 journeys pass, npm run i18n:pot clean.

• After CI: 274bb2d → 6179bd9. The Terminal journey failed on CI's macOS runner: it waited for the help's first line, which on that window had scrolled out of the rows xterm draws, because pseudo-locale lines are longer and wrap. It now waits for the help's last line. Reproduced locally at 1024×640 (failed before, passes after). Test-only change, checked by the authoring session, not re-reviewed: the i18n and terminal journeys pass (20).

Screenshots or recording

None. Nothing changes on screen in English beyond the help's line break, and the pseudo-locale journeys are the check for the translated state.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

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