Translated Help Files: Details on Usage, Finding Tags, and Hints for Translators

============================================================================== 2. Translated help files *help-translated* It is possible to add translated help files, next to the original English help files. Vim will search for all help in "doc" directories in 'runtimepath'. At this moment translations are available for: Chinese - multiple authors French - translated by David Blanchet Italian - translated by Antonio Colombo Japanese - multiple authors Polish - translated by Mikolaj Machowski Russian - translated by Vassily Ragosin See the Vim website to find them: https://www.vim.org/translations.php A set of translated help files consists of these files: help.abx howto.abx ... tags-ab "ab" is the two-letter language code. Thus for Italian the names are: help.itx howto.itx ... tags-it The 'helplang' option can be set to the preferred language(s). The default is set according to the environment. Vim will first try to find a matching tag in the preferred language(s). English is used when it cannot be found. To find a tag in a specific language, append "@ab" to a tag, where "ab" is the two-letter language code. Example: > :he user-manual@it :he user-manual@en The first one finds the Italian user manual, even when 'helplang' is empty. The second one finds the English user manual, even when 'helplang' is set to "it". When using command-line completion for the ":help" command, the "@en" extension is only shown when a tag exists for multiple languages. When the tag only exists for English "@en" is omitted. When the first candidate has an "@ab" extension and it matches the first language in 'helplang' "@ab" is also omitted. When using |CTRL-]| or ":help!" in a non-English help file Vim will try to find the tag in the same language. If not found then 'helplang' will be used to select a language. Help files must use latin1 or utf-8 encoding. Vim assumes the encoding is utf-8 when finding non-ASCII characters in the first line. Thus you must translate the header with "For Vim version". The same encoding must be used for the help files of one language in one directory. You can use a different encoding for different languages and use a different encoding for help files of the same language but in a different directory. Hints for translators: - Do not translate the tags. This makes it possible to use 'helplang' to specify the preferred language. You may add new tags in your language. - When you do not translate a part of a file, add tags to the English version, using the "tag@en" notation. - Make a package with all the files and the tags file available for download. Users can drop it in one of the "doc" directories and start use it. Report to the development team, so they can add a link on www.vim.org. - Use the |:helptags| command to generate the tags files. It will find all languages in the specified directory. ============================================================================== 3. Writing help files *help-writing* For ease of use, a Vim help file for a plugin should follow the format of the standard Vim help files, except for the first line. If you are writing a new help file it's best to

This section details how to use translated help files in Vim, including setting the 'helplang' option to prioritize languages. It explains how to specify a language for a tag using "@ab" and how Vim handles tag lookups in different language settings. The section provides guidelines for translators regarding encoding, tag translation, and file organization, as well as how to make their work available for others to use.