Russian language pack (2615 UI strings) — and a request: the desktop shell is English-only for every non-zh locale

[Balla1ore]

Hi! I built a Russian language pack for the web client, and while doing it I hit one gap that a plugin cannot close — the desktop shell ships en and zh only. Sharing both the plugin and the finding here, since CONTRIBUTING.md says external pull requests are not accepted at the moment.

The pack

dsh-locale-ru — https://github.com/Balla1ore/dsh-locale-ru (GitHub topic dsh-plugin)

• 2615 strings in 58 namespaces — every dictionary the client ships at 0.2.0-rc.2, so chat, sidebar, settings, models, permissions, trajectory, jobs, subagents, approvals, deliverables, the Plugins page and the rest are Russian.
• Untranslated keys fall back to English, so a newer DSH shows English for new strings instead of breaking the interface.
• The browser half is one self-contained bundle with no dependencies; the host half additionally keeps the desktop-shell workaround below prepared.
• Install: sidebar Plugins → Add plugin → paste the repository address, or unpack the release asset and run install.cmd. Pick Настройки → Общие → Язык → «Русский» afterwards.

The gap: the shell is hard-wired to two languages

apps/desktop/src/locale.ts:

export interface DesktopLocale {
  readonly id: 'en' | 'zh-CN'          // line 344
  readonly messages: DesktopMessages
}

export function resolveDesktopLocale(locale: string): DesktopLocale {   // line 349
  return locale.toLowerCase().startsWith('zh')
    ? { id: 'zh-CN', messages: zh }
    : { id: 'en', messages: en }       // everything else, including ru
}

export function resolveDesktopStartupLocale(preference: string | null, languages: readonly string[]): DesktopLocale {  // line 361
  const selected = preference?.toLowerCase()
  if (selected === 'zh' || selected === 'en') return resolveDesktopLocale(selected)      // line 363
  for (const language of languages) {
    const primary = language.toLowerCase().split('-')[0]
    if (primary === 'zh' || primary === 'en') return resolveDesktopLocale(primary)      // line 366
  }
  return resolveDesktopLocale('en')    // line 368
}

So a user who selects Русский in the client gets a Russian client and an English shell:

• the window menu bar (Application, Edit) and its items (Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, Select All),
• the tray menu, the quit and background-work dialogs,
• the sign-in / welcome window and the update screens.

apps/desktop/tests/locale.spec.ts even pins the current behaviour (resolveDesktopLocale('fr-FR').messages → en), so this looks intentional rather than an oversight — and it affects every language the client may add later, not just Russian.

What is ready if you want it

• Complete Russian table, same 165 keys in the same order as en/zh: https://github.com/Balla1ore/dsh-locale-ru/blob/main/locales/shell-ru.json — MIT, take it as-is, no attribution strings inside.
• The change is four places plus one test:
  1. add export const ru = { … } next to en/zh (or import it from a locale file, if you prefer one file per language),
  2. extend the union: readonly id: 'en' | 'zh-CN' | 'ru',
  3. return it from resolveDesktopLocale for ru* (before the English fallback),
  4. accept 'ru' in both branches of resolveDesktopStartupLocale,
  5. add expectations to apps/desktop/tests/locale.spec.ts (the Russian key set equals the English one; resolveDesktopLocale('ru-RU').id === 'ru').
• preload-menu.ts and preload-welcome.ts both call resolveDesktopLocale and need no change; desktopClientMetadata keeps sending en_US for the account platform page, which is the right fallback for Russian.

I am not opening a pull request because CONTRIBUTING.md asks that they not be sent yet. If that policy changes, I am glad to prepare one — the table, the patch and the tests are ready — or to hand the table over in any other form.

The stopgap, and why upstream support would help

Until the shell knows Russian, the pack patches the installed app.asar (three files: lib/main.js, lib/preload-app.cjs, lib/preload-welcome.cjs): it keeps app.asar.before-locale-ru, verifies every archive entry byte-for-byte, refuses to write when an anchor is missing, node --checks each patched file, and --restore puts the original back. A DSH update replaces the archive and reverts the change, after which the pack prepares it again and a launcher applies it on the next start.

That is a lot of machinery for three lines of TypeScript in a file that already has the table structure, and it is the reason for this post: a shell that resolves any registered language, or at least a third dictionary, would let every user get Russian menus, tray and dialogs without touching the application.

Happy to answer questions, adjust the table to your terminology, or post this in Ideas instead if that is the better place for the request.