[Jalview-discuss] Jalview and i18n

[James Procter]

G'day Andreas!

Andreas Prlic wrote:
> A strategy for adding internationalization could be:
> 
> In Eclipse you can do "Externalize Strings" which can move String
> declarations into external properties files.  These properties files can
> easily get translated into different languages (they are text only) and
> they then carry different file names depending on the language support
> they provide. This can then be used by Java automatically to switch to
> the correct translation based on the Locale.
> 
> http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/i18n/index.html
> 
> An example in terms of source code, see below.
Thanks very much!  I was, indeed, planning to have a go at the source
with the Externalize strings function. It looks like the soruce code
transformation is very controllable, and relatively painless, but I
still need to work out the fine details of how the different Locale
bundles will be managed after the transformation is made (one issue is
source code documentation, of course!).

My cautiousness is because I've had experience in the past with programs
where the internationalization as gotten out of sync with the software
UI... which can lead to great user confusion !  Any help or advice on
how to manage this would be *greatly* appreciated.

Paul and I, and Geoff and I, have been discussing this off-list, and I
think it shouldn't take too long to transform Jalview. I'll post news on
the list concerning how we get on with this. I'll set up a a prototype
internationalized bundle for the applet and the application, and Paul
has already volunteered (thanks ;) to help with a first translation of
the UI messages into French.  However, no guarantees on how long it'll
be before we've done this!


Jim

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J. B. Procter  (ENFIN/VAMSAS)  Barton Bioinformatics Research Group
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