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Return: translation & renovation

site changes

• translation/localization support:
  • nearly all static text on the wiki has been replaced with strings specified in a plain JSON file
  • default language for a wiki is generated at the root directory (/) as usual; new languages are in subdirectory (e.g. "/jp/album/diverging-delicacies")
  • no languages are newly supported yet, but the localization system is totally tested; see the news entry for details on contributing translations!
• thumbnail support:
  • small images (250x250) are used in grids (on homepage, album/artist galleries, etc)
  • medium images (400x400) are used on pages with larger cover art (individual track/album pages, etc)
  • full-size images (usually 600x600-1200x1200, pulled from public bandcamp listings) are no longer embedded at all, but can still be viewed by clicking on cover arts to zoom in
  • previously, every image on the site was full-size! this was particularly terrible for people with slow connections or limited bandwidths
  • example stats: download size of scrolling entire homepage reduced from 3.8mb to 0.6mb
• internal renovation across build file:
  • (before, after)
  • url system restructured:
    • link-related bugs are much harder to run into
    • link references in content (e.g. "[[album:foo-bar]]") are modularized and can more easily link to anywhere across the wiki
    • codebase forks can easily adjust url specification to move parts of the site to different paths (though this isn't yet possible via data file)
    • site build time is significantly reduced (since there are far fewer redundant calls to path.relative)
  • page write functions restructured
    • data required during a page write is gathered once, and then reused across all languages that page is built in, significantly reducing build time across multiple languages
    • writePage itself is broken into a few different chunks, which can be referenced individually when needed
    • changes tie nicely into url system restructure as well
  • shared data variables and functions organized and tidied for simpler access across code
  • miscellaneous arguments and specifications across code have been restructured to prefer explicit description before unnecessarily compact formats
    • this has the side-effect of making a fair amount of the build logic simpler!
  • significantly expanded data validation which happens before any site pages are written