Add a more realistic example of changing the map language

[1ec5]

The “Change a map’s language” example illustrates how to set a layout property, which is an important skill. But if the developer is actually looking for how to localize the map into the user’s preferred language, the usual method is to install a plugin that can automatically localize the map. That way, the developer doesn’t have to know in advance which symbol layers to manipulate.

I think there should be an example of how to install and configure a localization plugin. There doesn’t need to be an example on how to use every plugin, but setting the language is a basic user expectation at this point, similar to enabling right-to-left text support.

There are at least three MapLibre-compatible plugins for localizing the map:

• Diplomat: still in beta but the most featureful and tileset-agnostic
• Mapbox GL Language: optimized for Mapbox Streets
• maplibre-gl-omt-language: optimized for OpenMapTiles (specifically MapTiler’s configuration), undocumented and not under source control but in use on openstreetmap.org

I’ve been working on making Diplomat a no-compromises option for MapLibre GL JS and would be happy to contribute an example of it.

[HarelM]

Any example to a plugin to showcase basic "missing" functionality in MapLibre is welcomed.
Please note that it comes with the price of making sure the plugin works for future versions and the example is working as expected :-)
Nevertheless, feel free to submit a PR. I would prefer to have a production ready plugin and not a beta if possible.

[1ec5]

I’m willing to take Diplomat out of beta at some point. Just waiting for more feedback about the API design. It’s very heavily influenced by OSM Americana’s internals but doesn’t need to be.

I probably wouldn’t recommend mapbox-gl-language or MapTiler’s fork of it at this point, because that plugin’s API design has turned out to be challenging for users of non-Mapbox tilesets. Similarly, I forgot to mention that MapTiler’s SDK also extends MapLibre with its own language options, but that SDK is tied to MapTiler hosting. So a solution for the rest of the MapLibre developer community would be beneficial.