Language Labels

An Omeka Classic plugin that shows language labels (EN, FR, or full names) over item thumbnails on browse pages.

• Reads Dublin Core Language by default, or any other element.
• Recognises ISO 639 codes and names: fre, fr and French are one language.
• Gives each language its own colour, optionally derived from your theme's colour.
• Works with right-to-left pages and inherits the theme's font.
• Leaves the theme's thumbnail layout untouched. Without JavaScript, or for items without an image, labels appear inline.

Requirements

Omeka Classic 2.0 or later.

Installation

1. Download the latest release ZIP from the releases page.
2. Unzip it into your Omeka plugins/ folder. The folder must be named LanguageLabels.
3. In the admin, go to Plugins and click Install next to Language Labels.

Configuration

Under Plugins → Language Labels → Configure:

Setting	Description
Language element	Element to read. Separate several languages with separate values, or with ; , or |.
Show as	Short code (EN), language name (English), or the value as entered.
Position	A fixed corner, or automatic top/bottom, which follows the page's reading direction.
Maximum labels	Further languages collapse into +N. 0 for no limit.
Colour by language	One colour per language. When off, all labels use the label colours.
Base colour	Hex colour, or a theme variable with a hex fallback, e.g. var(--primary-color, #76D7C4).
Base language	Optional language shown in exactly the base colour.
Colour priority	Languages listed first get the most distinct colours.
Custom labels	value = label lines. An empty label hides the value, e.g. zxx =.
Show in admin	Also label thumbnails on the admin Browse Items page.

Region subtags are kept: en-GB shows as EN-GB or "English (GB)". About 60 common languages are built in; add others with custom labels.

Theming

• Markup: copy views/shared/common/language-labels.php to your theme's common/ folder. Keep the language-labels and language-labels--inline classes, and dir="auto" on each label.
• Styles: target .language-label, or set --language-label-bg and --language-label-fg.
• Thumbnail detection: the script looks for the nearest .item, .record, .hentry, tr, article or li, then the first image in it. Extend these with the language_labels_containers and language_labels_images filters.
• Themes without the browse hook: call <?php echo language_labels($item); ?> in the item markup. Don't combine it with the hook on the same page.
• Dynamically loaded items: call window.LanguageLabels.refresh() after adding them.

How it works

Labels are printed through the public_items_browse_each hook (and admin_items_browse_simple_each). A script then positions each list over its item's thumbnail, measuring the image instead of wrapping it.

Colours rotate the base colour's hue. Modern browsers compute this from the live theme colour; older ones use values precomputed from the hex.

Support

Report issues at github.com/raphihalff/omeka-plugin-LanguageLabels/issues.

License

GNU General Public License v3.0