The strings presented to the Pauker user are not hardcoded into the sourcecode but are provided by property files. This way programmers and translators can work more or less independently. Pauker has already been translated into (still a relatively small) number of languages. The next figure shows, where the respective files are located:
To edit the translations you have to right-click the file
Strings.properties
and choose the menu
option “”. Double-clicking
Strings.properties
or right-click->Edit
unfortunately does NOT work like expected!
After you have opened the file
Strings.properties
, a new frame
appears, where all translations are displayed side by side
(see next figure). This way you can edit translations.
Unfortunately this view is not very clearly laid out. By double-clicking the above tab “Strings.properties” you can maximize the translation's frame. If you only want to edit a certain translation you can collapse the columns of the other languages (see next figure).
And now we can work with this tool to some degree! :-)
One thing to notice here is that you should not translate strings that are the same in your language and in the default language, e.g. the English word “Status” is also “Status” in German and therefore is not translated (see figure above). The same rule exists with language variants, e.g. German in Germany and Switzerland is written almost exactly the same but in Switzerland the character “ß” is replaced by “ss”. Therefore the translation “de_CH - German (Switzerland)” is almost empty with just a few exceptions, e.g. “Größe” is translated to “Grösse”.
Besides the program strings you may want to update the
translation of the credits information. This information is
in the file
credits_<your language code>.html
(see next figure):
This file is presented when you use the Pauker menu item “”. →
Next to the credits information in the
“About Pauker” dialog is the software license.
This license is in the file
license_<your language code>.html
(see next figure):
There are already some unofficial translations of the software license into several languages available at the “Unofficial GNU License Translations Page”: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/translations.html
Another document for translation is this online help itself. This documentation is written in DocBook. For more information about DocBook please visit the following website: http://www.docbook.org
The source for this document is neither in the Source Packages nor in the Test Packages but in a dedicated project directory (see next figure):
You can edit the file Pauker.docbook
from within NetBeans. It is highly recommended to tell
NetBeans that files ending with “docbook” are
XML files. This way NetBeans provides syntax highlighting
and XML validation for the online help document.
Just add the item “docbook” to
“”
→ → → → → → →
Pauker uses JavaHelp for presenting the online help. See the following website for more information about JavaHelp: https://javahelp.dev.java.net
For transforming the file
Pauker.docbook
to JavaHelp we use XSLT.
For more information about XSLT see the following website:
http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt
Transforming the Pauker DocBooks to JavaHelp in every supported language is a fairly complex process. Therefore an Ant target “1_create-docs” has been written that does all the necessary things automatically (see next figure):
This Ant target should run on all current Linux distributions if you have the package “xsltproc” installed. For more information about writing Ant targets see the following website: http://ant.apache.org
To be able to see the result, you have to start Pauker with the updated translation. Just press the F6 button.
To see Pauker with the new translation, your operating system or desktop must be started in the language of your new translation. If you can not or do not want to switch the locale of your running system you have to reconfigure the Netbeans Pauker project: Right-click the project “Pauker” and choose the menu entry “”.
In the Project Properties category “Run” you
can either choose already existing language configurations
from the combobox at the top of the window or if your
language configurations does not exist so far you can add a
new configuration and set the VM-Options
-Duser.language=<language code>
and
-Duser.country=<country code>
.
After this you can start Pauker by pressing the F6 key.
You can easily switch between different language configurations by using the configuration combobox at the NetBeans toolbar:
If you do not just want to extend or correct a translation
but add a new one, you have to right click the file
Strings.properties
and select the menu
item
“”.
To be useful in preferably all countries where this language is spoken, you should not use further specializations like country codes or variants.
In addition to the new file
Strings_<language>.properties
you should also create a new translation for the Pauker
credits with the following steps:
select credits.html
copy the file, e.g. by pressing Ctrl+C
select the package “pauker”
paste the file, e.g. by pressing Ctrl+V
rename the file
credits_1.html
,
e.g. by clicking it with the right mouse button,
selecting the menu entry
“” and change the file name
to
credits_<language>.html
(i.e. if you are adding an Italian translation
use credits_it.html
)
In your new file
Strings_<language>.properties
you
have to adopt the value for the key
“About_Message_File” so that it points to your
new file credits_<language>.html
.
The next file to add is a translation for the software
license. Copy and rename the file
license.html
to your language with the
same steps as for the credits (see above). Please note, that
there are already some unofficial translations of the
license into several languages available at the
“Unofficial GNU License Translations Page”:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/translations.html
In your new file
Strings_<language>.properties
you
have to adopt the value for the key
“License_File” so that it points to your
new file license_<language>.html
.
The last thing to add is a translation for this online help. You should:
create a new directory for your language in the
folder doc/docbook/
copy the file
Pauker.docbook
from another
language into your directory
translate your copy of
Pauker.docbook
add the transformation handling to JavaHelp to the Ant task “1_create-docs”