I am new to iPhone App development (I am using XCode 4.2) and I was wondering if there is a way to translate all the strings , caption etc ... internally without having to translate them one by one .
an idea I have in mind is to use NSUserDefaults to save the language as a global variable and translate everything accordingly
another option is to make a look up table (is it even possible in Objective-C ?)
Thanks
You can use NSLocalizedString(#"<#key#>", #"<#comment#>") and one file (named Localizable.strings( per language. If you use the above function you can use the App Linguan (available on the Mac App Store) to generate the Localizable.strings files.
There is also a command line tool called genstrings that will create the file for you, but believe me that Linguan app will pay for itself in minutes.
You should always add a comment to allow a better translation and to provide context about the key.
You can read a step-by-step tutorial of the process here:
iPhone Localization Tutorial
Here's a high-level overview of the basics (the above tutorial has details):
1) Change all your coded strings to call: NSLocalizedString(#"My text", #"Context for the translator")
2) Export all your strings using the genstrings Terminal command.
3) This creates a text file called Localizable.strings with all your English (source) strings. It looks like this:
/* Context for the translator */
"My text" = "My text";
You send that file to the translators. They'll translate the right side like this: "My text" = "Mi texto";
4) You place each translated Localizable.strings file in its proper language folder: en.lproj, fr.lproj, es.lproj, etc.
When your app loads on the iPhone it will check the user's language settings. If the user has chosen French as the system language, the Localizable.strings inside your fr.lproj folder file will load. If there are any untranslated strings, it just defaults to English (or whatever your source language is) for those.
It's worth following the whole tutorial and note that the file/folder names have to be exact!
Look up the documentation for NSLocalizedString. And how to localize your .xib files (you make localized copies in English.lproj, de.lproj, fr.lproj, etc.).
All you will have to create are the files with the key-value pairs for each language you want to translate and name them accordingly i.e. _en, _fr and so on.
Then all you have to do is send a message to this method:
NSLocalizedString(#"myKey", nil)
And this will return the localized String, in whatever language the current iPhone configuration is.
Related
My application writes files known as ".nec", which are simply text files. I'd like them to open in my app if it's on the machine, or open in the default text editor if it's not.
There are surprisingly few examples of how to set these things in Apple's documentation. Do I simply set the MIME type to text/plain, or are there other things I should do as well?
Most computers / mobile devices will use the file extension to determine the file type rather than read the file headers so if you are using a custom file extension then the device won't know which application handles that file.
If you want your applications documents to opened by something outside of your application you will need to use a standard format for your file type.
For textual documents the most common are likely to be .txt, .rtf and .doc
If your documents are just plain text without any formatting (like a log file) then you would be best using .txt, you shouldn't need to change much (if anything) to write in this format.
After a quick google of the file extension .nec I found this:
NEC files are Uncommon Files primarily associated with Unknown Apple II File (found on Golden Orchard Apple II CD Rom).
NEC files are also associated with NEC JIS Encoded File, PIMS Notes for Windows CE Audio Record File (Nacetech Co. Ltd.) and FileViewPro.
If one of your files were to be (for example) emailed to a windows user, Windows would not know that this is a simple text file and would likely prompt the user to search online for a program that handles this file extension.
Not an answer as such, but as to date you don't have one here are some things to explore in the hope it is useful.
The old style type and creator of Mac OS have just about gone, first to replaced by just file extensions, and now there are UTIs.
If you read Apple's Uniform Type Identifier Concepts you will see your app can declare a UTI, say com.markowitz.nectext, which conforms to the standard UTI public.text. Now a UTI helps the Finder (Launch Services) locate the app to open a file, you could explore what happens if there is no such app available but the UTI declares it conforms to public.text.
[Just seen your comment on another answer re: right-clicking. At a guess this would be the UTI above.]
Another avenue to explore, getting into the undocumented side of OS X, is how the Finder's "Get Info" handles setting the "Open With" preference on a file. Try setting a plain text file to open in your app, then use the xattr -l <file> in the Terminal to see what was done. You should see an extended attribute com.apple.LaunchServices.OpenWith whose value looks like some form of plist.
Just remember this is undocumented, the API used by the Finder is private, but then its just an extended attribute...
Have fun.
I have localized my app and set up the Localization.string file.
Now that I want to add new strings, how do I make it so the corresponding files get the new strings automatically? Or do I have to manually add them?
Just not sure how I should organize my translators to be able to see that there are new strings to translate without having to just keep track of it manually.
I don't think there is an automatic way to manage them.
What we do is add a "//New" or "//Changed" to the end the english resource string, and our translators remove it when they add the other umpteen versions.
We actually put a \ tag with the date the item was added in order to let the translators know what is new and when it was added.
Another thing that we do is leverage a tool which auto translates our English localizable.strings files into target languages using Google's api service. While Google's translations aren't perfect, they are a great start for our translators. This really jumpstarted our translation process. Link to Apple Store app.
In my project, I need to support the Korean language. How is it possible - can anyone explain briefly with example, whether it is possible or not?
It's certainly possible.
You just tell Xcode to add a Korean localization to any of your application's localizable resources that need to change for that language. (Localizable resources include strings files, xib files, and potentially any images containing text.) Xcode will create a copy of your existing English resource, which you can modify and replace with a Korean-language equivalent.
Then when your application is run on a device with Korean set as its preferred language, iOS will automatically use the Korean resources intead of the English ones to present the application's user interface. If you have used good localization code practices (such as using NSLocalizedString to reference strings you present in the user interface) you shouldn't have to change any of your code to support different languages.
Check this guide on how to localize your apps for iPhone: http://www.icanlocalize.com/site/tutorials/iphone-applications-localization-guide/
i have an app that i have to localize. I am already localizing the nibs and some texts, i just have a doubt.
I need to pull a plist from the bundle which contains some texts, for the other languages i would have other plists. How can i accomplish the loading of them in a nice simple way.
My initial though is to have a text.plist , text-sp.plist , text-fr.plist and retrieving the current language then if language == english grab the text.plist, if language == spanish grab text-sp.plist and so on.
Is there a better way to do this?
I'd rather somehow make the .plist localizable and do something similar to what i do with texts using NSLocalizedString, but i am not sure how to use it in this case.
Sorry, just found the solution.
Just right click the .plist file and add new localizations like any other file. Then the OS handles which one to load according to the current locale settings.
I had to clean my targets in order for the changes to take effect, thats why i initially thought this was not working.
I am working on one multilanguage project which will download string from server depend on language selected by user. I would like to save this downloaded string into localizable.string file. So how could I do that? I know how genstrings works but I would like to generated *.strings file by code and save it. My code will read this *.strings file for localizable. Anybody know which api i have to use?
thanks in advance
Manu
Typically, localization depends on strings files that are within the app bundle. Since you can not modify the app bundle at run time, you will have to put the strings files you downlaod elsewhere and you will have to modify the usual localization methods to find and use those strings files.
Look at Apple's iPhone samples to see how they do localization and fetching of the strings, and see if you can replace all the local accesses of the localization resources with resources in another directory.