[jbosstools-dev] Suggested coding guidelines for internationalisation

[Max Rydahl Andersen]

> 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!)

Thinking on these I *think* the only things we have is the splashscreen  
(which
cannot be dynamically calculated so it needs a localized version and  
eclipse
supports that afaik)

Otherwise it is just icons with acronyms, i.e. there is an icon with HQL  
in the lower
right - but I assume you would not translate HQL anyway since it's a  
(technical) name and not a verb, correct ?

> 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

These are all from examples/test/doc projects and need to stay as is for  
now.
They don't end up in the enduser-distribution.

> 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!

For main dev, we would just edit the original source properties file,  
correct ?
Your tooling will use those as input to your .po translation, correct ?

> 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.

hmm - these are actually empty so i'm not sure what they are needed for.
Again, these are templates used for generating other projects so not sure  
it will be relevant
to localize it.

But is this not irrelevant since resourcebundles (and I assume pot too)  
just take the bsae name
(in this case e.g. web-facesconfig_1_2) and then append the localization  
to find localized version.

I agree it should be avoided to avoid confusion, but technically it should  
just work find ?

> 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.

I would really really hate if the resources would have to move out of
the src trees. That would require us to have an extra build step when
just developing of copying the resources. The files would also still
have to have the full qualified name to be looked up.

i.e. src/org/jboss/tools/as/Messages.properties would end up being
resource/org/jboss/tools/as/Messages.properties anyway. Wouldn't it
be easier to just get the UI resource properties to have the same name,
i.e. Messages.properties (and the sibling class Messages.java) ?

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

jboss.org/tools, click wiki and add them there (lets put a "This is a  
*draft*" until
we reach a conscensus)

-- 
/max