[jbosstools-dev] XModel and i18n

[Sean Flanigan]

On 2009-06-19 22:07, Viacheslav Kabanovich wrote:
> XModel is an internal model for a number of editors and views.
> Most strings in org.jboss.tools.common.model are internal constants not
> subjected to i18n.
> Let me put them into XModelInternalConstants interface to reduce the number
> of strings in code.

That's great, thanks Slava.

It would also be really helpful if you could mark (with NON-NLS 
comments) the strings that don't need translation.  Or, if it's easier, 
externalize the strings which need it, and I'll add the comments myself, 
on everything else in org.jboss.tools.common.model.*.

I'm having trouble making the distinction myself since I don't always 
understand the strings I'm seeing.  I mean, I can usually tell that 
"true" or "validator.add" should not be translated (and is likely to 
break something if it were), but it's hard for me to say if "{0} can 
contain only {1} child with entity {2}." really needs translation.  That 
UI string is obviously meant to be read by a human, not a computer, but 
I can't tell whether an end-user will ever see it.  I would have to know 
how DefaultWizardDataValidator gets used.

OTOH, if you can, say, confirm that these strings are only seen by JBoss 
Tools developers, we could just mark the entire common.model plugins as 
non-translatable and save a lot of work.

Some days I wonder if it even makes sense to translate development 
tools, but then I remember all the contributed translations for Eclipse 
and the Japanese contribution for JBoss Tools.  Some people are 
definitely keen to have native support, but sometimes it's hard to know 
where the line should be drawn.

-- 
Sean Flanigan

Senior Software Engineer
Engineering - Internationalisation
Red Hat