TinyMCE multilanguage plugin

This plugin will make the creation of multilingual contents on Moodle much easier with the TinyMCE editor.

The plugin is developed to work with the optionally installed Iñaki Arenaza's multilang2 filter.

This plugin was started as an adaption of Iñaki Arenaza's plugin for legacy TinyMCE editor and has been made to work with TinyMCE 6 that is included in Moodle ≥ 4.1. Further development of this plugin added support for the builtin multilanguage tags that are suppored in Moodle core, so that the multilang2 filter is no requirement anymore.

After the installation of the plugin, the TinyMCE shows a new Button (with a globe icon) and a menu entry in the "Format" section where you can select a language. Clicking on a language entry adds a language opening and closing tag to your text at the current cursor position. If there is a selection then the language tags are placed around the selection. In case you use the highlighting option and see the yellow language tags, you may click one of these tags then select a new language from the menu and that will change the language of the existing tag. You may also remove it by hitting the backspace or delete key. This will remove the tag, and it's counterpart in case the formatting of the text is correct.

Current version

The latest release is v1.2 (build 2024042200) for Moodle 4.1 and newer.

Requirements

There are no additional requirements. To benefit from the plugin capabilities the TinyMCE editor must be used in text area (either set as a user preference or being the standard editor set by the Moodle site admin). If you use the plugin with the multilang2 filter the {mlang} tags for the filter are used. If the filter is not installed, the standard <span class="multilang"> tags are used.

Installation

• Unzip the archive file or copy repository content into *moodleroot*/lib/editor/tiny/plugins.
• Install the plugin within Moodle via the upgrade script.
• Optional: Adjust the settings in "Site administration" -> "Plugins" -> "Tiny Multi-Language Content (v2)".

Troubleshooting

If the language selection does not appear in the editor:

• Check that the multilang2 filter is installed and enabled.
• Check that your site has at least two languages installed.
• If you don't have more than one language installed, enable the addlanguage option and set a few language iso codes in the languageoptions setting.

If your language tags are saved correctly but all language content is displayed, no matter which user language is selected, then check that you have the language tags for a certain phrase within the same block element (e.g. paragraph). See details at the Moodle documentation.
This does not apply if you use the multilang2 filter because there is a strict filtering even though elements (referring to the same content in different languages) span via multiple paragraphs.

Usage

Editor

Whenever a textfield appears where the editor is used, the plugin can be used either by clicking the globe icon button in the toolbar or via the Format menu. To make a text language dependent mark the text, then select a language from the menu. As soon as the language is selected, you see language markers at the beginning and the end of your previously selected text.

The language tags itself cannot be edited. Instead, click on a language tag and the context menu appears. This allows you to change the language of an existing tag or remove the language tags for that selection. These options can also be accessed via the Format menu or via the toolbar button.

Text conversion between markers and html

Whenever the save button is hit to save the text, the language tag marker in the WYSIWYG mode of the editor are converted to correct language tags that can be used within the text. If the multilang2 filter is installed and active on the Moodle site, the {mlan xx} annotation is used, where xx is the iso code of the selected language. If the multilang2 filter is not installed, the language tags are transformed into the standard Moodle annotation. These are span elements that look like <span class="multilang" lang="xx" dir="ltr">, where xx contains the iso code of the language and the dir attribute annotates whether this is a left to right language or vice versa.

Note: for the moment the dir="ltr" attribute is not included in the code because it breaks the Moodle multilanguage filter.

When loading a text, both annotations are read and translated into marked language tags in the WYSIWYG mode. If mixed annotations are used in the text, these are preserved upon saving.

Possible languages options

The languages that are shown in the toolbar menu, Format menu or context menu are the same. However, there are a few exceptions. The Remove all language tags is not displayed in the context menu. This option removes any language tags that are currently in the edited text.

The context menu has no Remove all tags option. Instead, it shows a trash icon that removes the selected language tag pairs.
Furthermore, there is no context menu at all if showalllangs is enabled, because that would make the menu having too many options.

The option Fallback (other) is available only when the multilang2 filter is installed because the standard Moodle has no fallback option.

The languages are ordered alphabetically when using the installed languages or the option showalllang is enabled. If the languages are defined via languageoptions the order of the provided iso codes is preserved.

Version History

1.2

• Removal of the attribute dir e.g. dir="ltr" for language direction because it breaks the standard multilanguage filter in Moodle.
• Support for Moodle 4.4 and PHP 8.3.
• Corrections of content and typos in README.
• Maturity changed to STABLE.

1.1

• Fix finally There are some issues with the latest version #6
• Fix problem with already defined behat test steps by switching behat class to use traits (thank you, Jason Platts)
• Removed setting: fallbackspantag
  • It was not observed correctly (markup in the editor is still applied even if the setting was off).
  • Correcting the first point would have lead to no styling which is somewhat awkward when there are <span class="multilang"> tags contained in the text but not marked as such (because of the setting being disabled).
• In Site administration -> Plugins -> Text editors the label for this plugin settings uses now the same language key as the plugin name itself (the "settings" suffix vanished).
• Add ci workflow for Moodle 4.3 and adapt behat test that used the source view of TinyMCE.

1.0

• Fix issue TinyMCE link plugin does not work properly when multilang2 is installed. Many thanks to Mario Wehr for his contribution.
• Fix: tag replacement did not work in the same way when highlighting was on or off.
• Fix: additional CSS for highlighting the code was not applied correctly.
• Fix: context menu sometimes inserted empty tags, when another language was selected.
• Fix: if an entire paragraph is selected, language tags are now applied inside the content (within te block element)
• New settings so that the admin may define a list of languages that can be used with the plugin, independent whether these language packages are installed in the Moodle site or not.
• New option to remove all language tags within the text at once.
• New feature, <span> elements use the dir attribute to annotate left to right and right to left languages (in standard Moodle annotation).
• New feature: the context menu has an icon to remove the selected language tag pair.
• Enhanced documentation to include new changes and add a chapter about usage.
• Lift version from 0.3 to 1.0 to reflect maturity.

Many thanks to Tai Le Tan from the Open University that provided a comprehensive pull request.

0.3

• Support for the standard language tags in Moodle without having to install the filter_multilang2.
• Tooltip with possible languages is shown when a highlighted language tag is selected (only when showalllanguages is off, otherwise the tooltip list would be too long).
• Fix: when the text editor lost the focus the highlighting of the language tags disappeared.
• Fix: the iso code was not displayed in the language list in the menu when showalllanguages was enabled.
• Some internal refactoring because of the changes from above that made them necessary.
• Adjust behat tests to test both, standard annotation and multilang2 filter annotation.
• Change code maturity to RC.

0.2.3

• Fix links in README file and add license file.

0.2.2

• Lift software maturity level to STABLE.
• Adapt CI to test against Moodle 4.2.
• Fix issue Probably, $string['helplinktext'] = 'Multi-Language Content (v2)'; is needed in the lang strings.
• Add version history to README file.

0.2.1

Initial release