Localization

Localising Quicksilver

In order to help localise Quicksilver, visit the Quicksilver Transifex Project page. All files that are currently localisable are shown on Transifex.

Thank you for helping!

Localisation for Developers

Localising Strings in the code

For developers only:

All strings that are eventually visible to the user should be localised, excluding NSLog strings (discussion needed). Note that NO strings other than English strings should be translated downstream of the Transifex project. The workflow is to push only English files and pull all other translations from Transifex.

If you are working on the core App using the NSLocalizedString(@"my english string",nil) method. There is no need to create a corresponding entry in any .strings file, as if none exists, the original string will be used.

In order to localise plugins, you should use the NSLocalizedStringFromTableInBundle(@"Error renaming File: %@ to %@", nil, [NSBundle bundleForClass:[self class]], nil).

In both the above cases, nil was passed as the last argument. This is a 'comment' entry. See Apple's documentation.

Passing nil as the table (as has been done in the above two cases), the default 'Localizable' table (or Localizable.strings file) is used for storing and subsequently translating the string. Use

NSString *NSLocalizedStringFromTable(NSString *key,
   NSString *tableName,
   NSString *comment)

if you want to set the table for the main bundle (that is, the core App), or set the table string in

NSString *NSLocalizedStringFromTableInBundle(NSString *key,
   NSString *tableName,
   NSBundle *bundle,
   NSString *comment)

for a plugin.

As has previously been stated. There should be no need to create an English string in the .strings file, as by default the NSLocalizedString… methods return the input string if nothing is find. Secondly, we use genstrings to do all the heavy lifting for us anyway.

Genstrings

This will be implemented as a build phase in the Quicksilver project. It will output all the required .strings files ready for submission to Transifex.

Right now, you can generate for strings using the genstrings tool in Tools, or directly using stringstool and ibtool.

1. To generate strings for an .m file, and add it to an existing file: Quicksilver/Tools/stringstool --output-directory Quicksilver/Localized/en.lproj extract-mfiles Quicksilver/Code-App/QSUpdateController.m

2. To generate strings for all xibs:

find . ! -path '*/Code-External/*' ! -path '*/PlugIns-Main/*' -name "*.xib" -exec ./Tools/stringstool --output-directory Localized/en.lproj extract-interface-builder {} \;

Pushing and Pulling from Transifex

Updated source .stings files are automatically pushed to Transifex, and updated translations are automatically pulled from Transifex. The file in .tx/config.yml defines which strings files get pushed and pulled. Update that file to add new strings files.

Adding New Translation Files to Xcode

If a new language gets added in Transifex, new .strings files in the relevant .lproj folder will get added to the git repository. Xcode, however, won't know about these files until you add them to the Xcode project.

When new .strings files are added to the repository, open up Xcode and 'tick' the corresponding language in Xcode. Xcode will ask you if you want to use the existing file, choose 'yes'.

Fixing Transifex Parser Quirks

Transifex has issues with the '↩' character (see here). Ever time a file is translated, it converts the '↩' character to \r. The fix for this is manual, and involves running a search/replace:

cd Quicksilver
find . -name *.strings -exec perl -pi -e "s/\(\\\r\)/\(↩\)/g" {} \;
find . -name *.strings -exec perl -pi -e "s/\(⌘\\\r\)/\(⌘↩\)/g" {} \;
find . -name *.strings -exec git add {} \;
git commit -m "Update strings files (change \r to ↩)"

Dealing with difficult files

Quicksilver uses many different plist formats for getting information. One example is DefaultsMap.plist. For these 'awkward' files, always do a diff between the English and localised files, to make sure strings that shouldn't be translated have been left. An example of strings that should be left as they are in DefaultsMap.plist are those referring to a User Default key of some sort.