[jbosstools-dev] Suggested coding guidelines for internationalisation

[Sean Flanigan]

To make the i18n build tools less ad-hoc and more reliable, it would
help if I could make some assumptions about the structure of the source
code.  I'm in the process of preparing some jira issues for existing
wrinkles to be ironed out, but there are a few things to keep in mind
for future development.

1. Avoid including text in images.  If you need text in an image, it's
best to draw it on top at runtime.  That way, we can pull in translated
text.  Otherwise, we would have to provide multiple, localised, versions
of the image, and that (a) wastes space, and (b) would mean a more
complex build process.  (In other words, we haven't yet worked out how
to support it in the build!)


2. Avoid locale-specific .properties files in the source tree.  All
translations should be in .po files.  There are at least three different
categories of .properties files:
 a. .properties files used as the baseline for UI text (and for
translators to translate), eg messages.properties
 b. .properties files which contain locale-specific text, eg
messages_en.properties, messages_fr.properties
 c. .properties files used as configuration, eg hibernate.properties

I need to extract category (a) so that it can be translated.  (If
translators change category (c) config, things might break.)

There are a few en-specific .properties files in svn, but as they don't
live under ${plugin}/src, they shouldn't cause a problem for now:
./seam/tests/org.jboss.tools.seam.core.test/projects/Test1/src/messages_en.properties
./seam/tests/org.jboss.tools.seam.ui.test/projects/TestSeamELContentAssist/src/model/messages_en.properties
./documentation/development/usecases/en/modules/projectexample/lamp/src/action/messages_en.properties


So please avoid putting locale-specific .properties files in the main
source tree, even for English (messages_en.properties).  Locale-specific
text should go into the .po files which will live under
trunk/localization/{module}/plugins/{plugin}/resources/text/org/jboss/

The locale-specific .properties files will be generated as part of the
build process, by "localization"'s build.xml, for use at runtime.
Remember, edit the .po file, not the generated .properties file!


3. Avoid underscores in the basenames of .properties files.  Underscores
are used to separate the basename from the locale code, so these
underscores could lead to problems.

At present these files do contain translatable text:
./common/plugins/org.jboss.tools.common.model.ui/templates/web-facesconfig_1_2.properties
./common/plugins/org.jboss.tools.common.model.ui/templates/web-facesconfig_1_0.properties
./common/plugins/org.jboss.tools.common.model.ui/templates/web-facesconfig_1_1.properties

I will be submitting a jira about these files, but we should try to
avoid similar filenames in future.


4. Keep source code and properties files in separate, well-defined
locations.

In JBoss Tools, I have identified translatable .properties in the
following directories under various ${plugin} dirs:
	src/main
	src
	jbosscore
	jbossui
	templates
	template-src

From an i18n point of view, it doesn't really matter about the source
directories (src, src/main, jbosscore...), as long as translatable
resources can be found in one place.

To avoid svn conflicts and make everyone's lives easier, I would
probably leave the source dirs alone, but move all translatable
properties files into, say, ${plugin}/resources/text.  Suggestions
welcome, though.

Is there somewhere on the wiki this sort of thing should be recorded?


Thanks

Sean

-- 
Sean Flanigan

Senior Software Engineer
Engineering - Internationalisation
Red Hat

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