Automating Localizable.strings? - iphone

So, in my project I have 10 languages, and 10 Localizable.strings files.
I just created Localizable.strings files, a file for each language. Now they contain "key" = "value" pairs, and both keys and values are in English (default language).
My languages are all translated and stay in Excel files.
The question is, how can I insert all my languages in those files faster than just copying each word manually or writing a script for that?
Maybe there is a existing tool for this already?
Thanks.

I found an easy way to compose localizable.strings files from Excel documents.
In the Excel document, in specific columns I insert " " = " " symbols. It's easy to do for all the words by dragging Excel cell down from the corner, so that it copies stuff from that cell to all the cells you drag it to. (sorry for messy explanation)
Thus the document contains the same symbols and words as localizable.strings does.
Than I just copy everything to the text file, remove tabs, change extension to .strings.
(no comments saved unfortunately).
EDIT:
You can copy the stuff from Excel to Sublime Text, then Find & Replace tabs if any. Copy resulted stuff into proper Xcode .string file.

One application that will really save you a lot of time by automating and streamlining localization procedure is Localization Suite. I do not know if they support importing from excel (to save you time transferring your string pairs) but it's free and seems like a complete solution.

I had an internal script at work for doing that tasks in iOS and Android, and I've just opensourced it as a Gem. You can take a look at it here: http://github.com/mrmans0n/localio
It can open spreadsheets from Google Drive and local Excel files as well, like requested.
You just would have to install the gem
gem install localio
And have a custom DSL file in your project directory, called Locfile, with the info referring to your project and the localization files. An example in your case, where an Excel file is used, could be as simple as:
platform :ios
source :xls, :path => 'YourExcelFileGoesInHere.xls'
output_path 'Resources/Localizables/'
The .xls file should have a certain format, that probably is very similar to what you have right now. You just have to clone the contents of this one and fill it with your translations: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmX_w4-5HkOgdFFoZ19iSUlRSERnQTJ4NVZiblo2UXc
Hope this helps.

Here are the steps i followed:
change the extension of .strings to .txt on windows
open excel and go to File > Open
Choose the file to open. This should present an import wizard
Follow the steps and specify the delimiting character as =
You're done

Related

Can I perform a find/replace driven by a CSV/Excel file?

I have to perform a find/replace across my project's files using a rename rule-set which I have in CSV format.
My rename CSV is simple and in the format from value,to value:
foo,bar
car,dog
...
zip,zip
All from and to values are exact (so no need to do weird regex).
Is there any way (even w/ an extension) to feed this CSV into VS Code and have it perform the find and replace against all files in my project?
I can of course reformat this CSV to other formats (JSON, excel, etc.) fairly easily if that helps.
You could write a simple python script to do the replacing for you.
I ended up using Batch Replace extension for VS Code.
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=angelomollame.batch-replacer
Originally I had tried this extension but it wasnt working. I had an ah-ha momement as to why (i have about 500 replace rules). I also use a local history VS Code extension which creates a (massive) local history in a .history folder in the workspace. This extension was choking on processing the 10,000's of files in that (since technically its in my workspace).
Once i excluded that, it worked - though it did take ~1 min to process all my files, and during that time there is no indication that its running.

Scratch output file .txt or similar

I want to know if there is an easy way to open a .txt file and load some comma delimited data into variables in Scratch and furthermore add some variable data from Scratch to a .txt file or similar?
I have done a fair bit of google searching but not come across anything so I thought I would ask you guys.
I would love to use Java or something but its for my school kids and I cannot teach them to do it in Java or something else as they need to do what they have to in Scratch which is annoying but something I cannot change.
Scratch does not have file IO capabilities, and i doubt it ever will.
The closest thing that i know of is importing/exporting a list. Right-click on the list watcher from the Scratch IDE, and export. It will produce a .txt file, with each list item on a new line. If you have a similarly formatting TXT file, you can import it using the same method. Each line corresponds to a list item. Comma delimited data doesn't work with this.
You can download and edit the json script for the Scratch project.
From the "See Inside" screen, File->Download to your computer.
Rename the file to have a ".zip" extension instead of just ".sb2".
Unzip the file to edit the "project.json" file.
Edit the list data under "ListName": "[your list]" as desired.
Reassemble the zip file
Remove the ".zip" extension. (Back to ".sb2")
Update the Scratch project by going to the original project and selecting File->Upload from your computer.
In this sample project I have a list called "Jobs". The project.json file has a section like this...
"listName": "Jobs",
"contents": ["Accountant",
"Actor",
"Advocate",
"Appraiser",
"Architect",
"Baker",
...
Make whatever changes you want directly to the section for your list.
Currently, Scratch has no IO abilities, as the answer above me said, But there is a mechanism called JS extenions. Currently it's a closed beta, but when it will be released everyone would be able to program Javascript extensions for scratch. That means that you will be able to create a "Open file" block yourself.

iOS Localization - Updating Localizable.strings with just new strings

I have searched Google and StackOverflow and still have no clear answer on an easy and automated way of doing this but here is the scenario:
I have an app with 1000 strings localized into en, fr, de, es, it.
I build a new feature that makes 10 distinctly new NSLocalizedString() keys.
I just want those 10 new strings appended onto the ends of the files:
en.lproj/Localizable.strings
fr.lproj/Localizable.strings
es.lproj/Localizable.strings
de.lproj/Localizable.strings
it.lproj/Localizable.strings
genstrings will retrieve all 1010 distinct strings. This is a pain since I'll need to "needle in a haystack" find those 10 strings every time I do an update.
UPDATE 19-SEP-2014 -- XCode 6 - Apple has finally released support for XLIFF export and import of your .strings files
Whats new in XCode 6? Localisation
Linguan (v1.1.3) whilst it is a lovely tool most of the time, it is starting to be a tool in the other sense. It merges the changes but some strings aren't matching correctly when it merges, so everytime it does a Scan Sources it creates 100 new duplicate keys as well as the 10 strings I am after so it is making more work.
FileMerge As suggested below try doing a diff between old and new versions of the genstrings output files. The genstrings output has the strings sorted alphabetically so 10 strings scattered throughout 1000 means that there are 200 differences to review. it keeps matching the /*...*/ and the "..." = "..." and saying that the ... has been updated. It hasn't been updated, just shifted to a new location in the file. More and more it is looking like I am going to have to write a custom tool.
MacHG + FileMerge on a side note, for some strange reason doesn't like doing diffs out of the repository with the working copy of Localizable.strings. Both the left and right panes appear empty.
UPDATE: Turns out variations in some changesets being saved as UTF-16 and some as UTF-8 are screwing with it being able to do a proper diff.
Bash Script + FileMerge I have written the following script to help maintain my english reference file after each time I add new NSLocalizedString entries:
#LOCALISATION UPDATE SCRIPT
#
#This will create a temporary copy of the current 'en' reference file then generate the
#latest reference file using the 'genstrings' tool. Finally forcing FileMerge to launch
#and diff the changes.
#
#Last Updated: 2014-JAN-06
#Author(s): Josh Wilson
clear
#assuming this script is run from $SRCROOT
#Backup Existing 'en' reference
cp "en.lproj/Localizable.strings" "en.lproj/Localizable-src.strings"
#Scan source files for 'NSLocalizableString' macros
genstrings -q -u -o en.lproj Classes/*.{m,mm}
genstrings -q -u -a -o en.lproj Classes/iPad/*.{m,mm}
genstrings -q -u -a -o en.lproj Classes/iPhone/*.{m,mm}
#Force FileMerge to launch and diff the update (NOTE: piping to cat forces GUI to open)
opendiff "en.lproj/Localizable-src.strings" "en.lproj/Localizable.strings" | cat
#Cleanup up temporary file
rm "en.lproj/Localizable-src.strings"
But this only updates the EN file and I am lacking a way of having the other language files updated with the new keys. This one has been good for instances where I don't have an english word as the key and genstrings bombs my
"welcome_message" = "Welcome!" with "welcome_message" = "welcome_message"
POEditor http://poeditor.com/. This is an online tool and subscription based after 1000 strings. Seems to work well but it would be good if there was a non subscription based tool.
Traducto Pro Seems to do an alright job of integrating with XCode and extracting the strings and merging things together. But it is impossible to get anything back out of it until it is fully translated so you are coerced into using their translation services.
Surely this functionality has been implemented before. How does Apple keep their Apps localised?
Script junkies, I call upon thee! iOS development has been going on for some time now and localisation is kind of common, surely there is a mature solution to this by now?
Python Script update_strings.py: Stackoverflow finally recommended a related question and the python script in this answer Best practice using NSLocalizedString looks promising...
Tested it and in its current form (31-MAY-2013) it doesn't handle multiline comments if you have duplicate comments entries (expects single line comments).
Might just need to tweak the regex's a bit.
Checkout BartyCrouch, it perfectly solves your problem. Also it is open source, actively maintained and can be easily installed and integrated within your project.
Install BartyCrouch via Homebrew:
brew install bartycrouch
Alternatively, install it via Mint:
mint install Flinesoft/BartyCrouch
Incrementally update your Localizable.strings files:
$ bartycrouch update
This will do exactly what you were looking for.
In order to keep your Storyboards/XIBs Strings files updated over time I highly recommend adding a build script (instructions on how to add a build script here):
if which bartycrouch > /dev/null; then
bartycrouch update -x
bartycrouch lint -x
else
echo "warning: BartyCrouch not installed, download it from https://github.com/Flinesoft/BartyCrouch"
fi
In addition to incrementally updating your Storyboards/XIBs Strings files this will also make sure your Localizable.strings files stay updated with newly added keys in code using NSLocalizedString and show warnings for duplicate keys or empty values.
Make sure to checkout BartyCrouch on GitHub for additional information.
if you have the genstrings for the previous version, just a "diff" between new and old could do the tricks
EDIT: best use vimdiff to deal with utf-16 files
You can check out this Xcode Plugin I built for OneSky, it aims to improve the localization work flow for iOS/Mac OSX developers.
The string generation feature of the plugin runs genstrings and ibtool --export-strings-file to the selected source/IB files, new files will be added the project and target automatically, new strings will be merged into existing files with comments.
It will only generate/update strings for the base language, but you can make use of other features of the plugin to automate translation export and import with OneSky platform, which is free for crowdsource projects.
You may want to check out my solution here: SwiftyLocalization
With few steps to setup, you will have a very flexible localization in Google Spreadsheet (comment, custom color, highlight, font, multiple sheets, and more).
In short, steps are: Google Spreadsheet --> CSV files --> Localizable.strings
Moreover, it also generates Localizables.swift, a struct that acts like interfaces to a key retrieval & decoding for you (You have to manually specify a way to decode String from key though).
Why is this great?
You no longer need have a key as a plain string all over the places.
Wrong keys are detected at compile time.
Xcode can do autocomplete, so you can do something like this:
// It's defined as computed static var, so it's up-to-date every time you call.
// You can also have your custom retrieval method there.
button.setTitle(Localizables.login.button_title_login, forState: .Normal)
The project uses Google App Script to convert Sheets --> CSV Python script to convert CSV files --> Localizable.strings
You can have a quick look at this example sheet to know what's possible.

Update all localizable.strings in project

I have approximately 15 languages in my app, so i have 15 files like this: localizable.strings(language name)
All they have one source, and difference is only in right part of expression.( Ex: "NoMoney" = "Free" in localizable.strings(English) and "NoMoney" = "Gratis" in localizable.strings(Italian) and so on)
Is there any way to update all these files when I update source localizable file (It's localizable.strings(English) file )? Thanks.
In my project, I use Twine to maintain .strings files for many languages and it works pretty well. It allows to store translated strings for all languages in one "master" file and then generate appropriate .strings files for each language.

Create Numbers file and open it with Numbers on iPad

I would like to do a task that is quite simple on other OS, but it is not so trivial on iOS. Namely, I want to create file and open it in Numbers.
I can preview the file with UIDocumentInteractionController and then offer it to user that he/she opens it.
THis seems to me quite a reasonable solution. However, I need to offer proper file format. I suppose CSV and XLS would be reasonable to implement and it would most probably work, but I would still like to do it in native Numbers format if possible. However, I can't find any info about this file format.
Basically, this task is about exporting data to another app and then working further with them.
I don't know of a library that can create native Numbers files. There are hoewever some libraries that allow creating XLS files. Since Numbers fully supports XLS, this is probably the way to go.
There is a comercial library available that might work on the iPhone (costs $200): http://www.libxl.com/
As for free XLS libraries, I only know xlwt, a Python module. You could set up a webservice that creates an XLS file for your app, using xlwt on the server side.
If you want to pass information to Numbers, you can probably also use CSV files. If you use CSV files, you must be aware of some things. There are two kinds of CSV files: the comma separated version (used in english speaking countries) and the semicolon separated (used in continental europe).
The comma separated CSV files look for example like this:
"ID","First Name","Last Name","Salary"
1,"John","Malkovich",3400.20
2,"Fred","Astaire",2000.60
The second kind of CSV files are semicolon separated and use a comma as decimal mark. They look like this:
"ID";"First Name";"Last Name";"Salary"
1;"John";"Malkovich";3400,20
2;"Fred";"Astaire";2000,60
On the Macintosh, Numbers expects a different format depending on the Region setting. If you have your Region set to the US, it will expect the first kind. If you choose Germany, it will expect the second kind.
I don't know what kind of files Numbers on the iPad expects.
Another alternative would be using copy and paste. Try to copy tab separated text into the clipboard.
I hope this may help you. I've contacted libxl team and they responded with the link to the demo version of their iPhone library: http://www.libxl.com/download/libxl-iphone.zip