Language Support
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Revision 1.14, 26th Mar 2010 |
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The UPDD auxiliary programs have been written
to support multiple languages. As
standard the language shown is English but the programs will automatically
detect the systems locale (language setting) and switch to the appropriate
language if the associated language files exist. A UPDD setting and command line parameter
also exists to override the automatic language selection and specify the
actual language suite to use. It is our
intention with UPDD Version 4 to create over time a complete set of language
files. This document describes the
translation and language files and the methods used to create and maintain
the files such that anyone with suitable knowledge can assist us in the
translation process. Translation files
The UPDD
auxiliary programs have been written in a cross platform development tool
called QT. QT translations are held in
files with .ts extensions. Each translation files is associated with a
specific program in the UPDD suite, as shown below:
The xx
element of the file name relates to the system locale code use to identify
the system language. The system locale
code can be 2 or 3 character codes but the 2 character codes are used to
identify the main group language, e.g. en = English, GBR = English ( Locale identifiers
As and
when we support a language the appropriate QT UPDD translation files will be
placed in the UPDD translation FTP read only folder at ftp://translate:translate@ftp3.touch-base.com/lupdate. Currently the translation files held for
UPDD 4.1.8 release are:
* - Chinese systems report ZH for 2 character
locale. UPDD analyses the extended 5 character code and for
Language files
Translation
files are processed and integrated into the UPDD production system and
distributed as UPDD language files as part of the standard install. These language files will also be available
from the UPDD language FTP folder at ftp://translate:translate@ftp3.touch-base.com/qm. Translation process
Should a
language file not be available, or need amending, and you or your
organisation is able to assist in the translation process please note the
following procedures to submit translated text. 1)
Download the QT translation tool (linguist.exe
– click to initiate download) and its dll (qt-mt336.dll
- click to initiate download) to a folder on a Windows system. They can also
be downloaded from the FTP site ftp://translate:translate@ftp3.touch-base.com/lupdate. 2) Copy the *.ts files (from the same
FTP location as 1 above) appropriate to your language to the same
folder. It is important that you only
copy files for languages you have agreed with Touch-Base. Files for other languages may be in
translation by other parties and your changes might be lost.
3) Open each of the translation files
in turn using the translation tool (linguist.exe program) and translate the
listed text, as shown in the example dialog below:
The left hand column shows the number of
translations within the module and the number completed. As each translation
is made click on the In the following example there are two
outstanding translations in the Install module. All other modules are
complete:
Note that in the above translation the system
is showing where a new line (new line) is embedded in the
text. Where these hidden
characters are shown please ensure the translated text contains that same
formatting e.g (new line) should have a new line in the text, (sp) should have a space etc. In the example below the translated text has
a space at the beginning and the end:
i.e. German example
VERY VERY VERY IMPORTANT NOTE2: Do not translate com port names as these names are used to reserve the serial port for use by the driver. i.e COM1 must say COM1 etc. 4)
In the calibration program, during
calibration, we display the name of the controller being calibrated and also
show the desktop segment. As an
example, in English this would be shown as “Touch Controller X on Monitor 2”
This sentence comes from the text strings (found in TBcalib_xx.ts, section
QWidget): 5)
Some text does not need to be translated as in
a very few cases there is customer related entries which are used in special
OEM builds of our software: Examples of this text is; Egan PowerX, Easiteach
Teamboard, Zytronics. If there is text
that you are unsure of email us and we will advise further. 6) Some text associated with controls ends with 3 dots … This has a specific meaning in the Windows user interface guidelines and as such should be retained in the translations. 7)
If an exclamation mark ( 8)
Once the new or updated translation files are
ready and all translations entries are ticked (
9) Once processed you may download the language (*.qm) files from ftp://translate:translate@ftp3.touch-base.com/qm and copy to your UPDD application folder. These files will be used automatically when a language file that matches the OS locale is found. The most up-to-date language files will be applied to production released software. The translation process is iterative. After each translation cycle the display and operation of the software will be reviewed and further translations may be required as a result. ConsiderationsThe UPDD dialogs are initially laid out with the English text and therefore the white space available for translated text needs to take into consideration the space initially allocated. Generally speaking text will wrap if it is longer than the allocated space and will not always be readable if the text exceeds the available height of the allocated area should it wrap. When considering the translations to use you also need to consider if the system can be configured to utilize large font sizes and try and cater for the range of dialog fonts. For example, in Windows 7, the end user can specify text size to use in the Display Properties and it is important to test the translations in all the available options. Where display issues are seen it may require the translation to be adjusted or we may be able to increase the area available for the text display. Help FilesUPDD drivers are supplied with on-line help files. Custom or translated help files can be created for distribution with our software if required. The Help file document describes the help system and the files used. These files should be reproduced in the required language and send to us for inclusion in the software. We use a cross platform help viewer, called helpviewer, to view the files and this is delivered as part of the UPDD software. To test the appearance of the completed help file use ‘helpviewer [filename]’. The help viewer may not handle all aspects of the HTML language so do not use advance features in the help files – keep it simple! Help file imagesThe help file images, in the supplied English help files, are held in a sub-folder called images. Listing the images sub folder in UPDD will show all the images used and their file names. The path to these images as held in the help file will be: src="images/[imagefile].png"></span></b></p>
e.g.
src="images/calibration-style.png"></span></b></p> If you create new language help files you should also create the same image files for the designated language. The directory listing example below shows the list of both English and Korean images. The Korean images have the ‘–ko’ file extension. To create a new set of images copy the English image file to the required language image file. E.g. console_calibration.png becomes console_calibration-JP.png for create a Japanese file. You then replace the image with the Japanese version, cut from the UPDD dialogs. When you create and add new images into the help file it is important you abide by the following rules: Images should be
held in an ‘image’ sub folder under the help file folder. This is a requirement of our source control, production system and UPDD file structure: The images must be
referenced as external files and not embedded in the file. For example, if using Microsoft Word to create the file use the ‘Link to File’ option when inserting an image, as shown below:
The image file
paths are held as relative paths and not absolute paths Once the file is created and all images have been embedded it is important that the image path in the HTML file is a relative path to the Images folder and not an absolute path. One way to check this is to load the file in a text editor, locate the image and see the path used. In this example, we have opened up the .htm file in NotePad and located the image, which is being held as an absolute path:
This is edited to make it a relative path and the file is saved: src="images/calibration-style.png"></span></b></p> becomes src="images/calibration-style.png"></span></b></p> To test that the images are ok, place the help files and images on a
‘new’ system with the helpview program and run up each help file in turn:
e.g. C:\helptest (.htm files) C:\helptest\images (images) If the image is not seen in the file then the path is not pointing to the image folder and needs updating. Once all files load OK and ALL images are displayed correctly from the image path send all the files to us for inclusion. Licence FilesUPDD license details are displayed from the UPDD Console, About Box, View License option. This license is displayed in English unless the appropriate language licence file exists. To create a licence file in a different language copy the licence file licence-en.txt in the UPDD application to the appropriate language file (e.g. licence-ko.txt for Korean) or download the text from here, add the translations using a NotePad type tool and submit the update file to Touch-Base. In some cases (such as Japanese) the
control used to display the license text has failed to reliably find the
string length of the file and not all the text has been displayed. Should this occur on any translated licenses
you can use the marker <EOF> which the control can identify as the end
of the text and display up to that point. Program Manager menu entriesThe program Manager menu entries are defined in a text
file called menuv4xx.txt where the xx element of the file name relates to the system locale code use
to identify the system language. The
Program Manager menu entries appear as follows on an English system: The text
is taken from the menuv4xx.txt file. The format of the English file is as
follows: tbalt.exe;Event Selector;;0;1 updddraw.exe;Test;/test;0;1 dcu.exe;Settings;;0;1 tbcalib.exe;Calibrate;/all;0;1 To create a locale menu files perform the following steps: 1) Create
a file using notepad called menuv4xx.txt
where xx is the system locale, e.g. ja = Japanese 2) Copy the above 4 lines and paste them into the .txt file 3) Translate the 2nd element of each line, as highlighted in bold above. 4)
Save the file as ANSI 5)
Email the file to language co-coordinator Example file after translation, in the case to German: tbalt.exe;Maustastenauswahl;;0;1 updddraw.exe;Test;/test;0;1 dcu.exe;Einstellungen;;0;1 tbcalib.exe;Kalibration;/all;0;1 Control Panel shortcut (Windows)The Windows Control Panel icon by default carries the text ‘Pointer Devices’ and is hard coded. Supply the relevant translation in a .txt file that can be embedded in the software. Here is an example of the German translation which also shows the default English entry:
Selecting languagesSystemWindowsSince Windows 2000 the operating system can support a number of languages and keyboard layouts as listed at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=292246. The same article describes how to install and utilise the language utilities via the Control Panel, Regional and Language option. If the Language bar is enabled in the task bar it can be used to switch languages, as shown below.
This allows for various languages to be tested with the same keyboard layout and may be of use when testing. When testing/viewing languages on a fixed locale system it may be necessary to have installed supplemental language support as shown:
Mac OS XThe System Preferences, International dialog can be used to specify the system language to use in application menus and dialogs, as shown below: LinuxTo follow. UPDD UtilitiesIf you want to view UPDD utility programs in a different language to the locale of the system then you need to change the UPDD ‘Language’ setting to define the language files to be used. E.g. setting the value to DE whilst using an English system will force UPDD to use the German files. For UPDD version 4.0.x this is held in the UPDD registry branch HKEY_LOCAL_M For UPDD version 4.1.x the is held in the UPDD INI file under the [UPDD\parameters] section. The UPDD Advance Console can also be used to change the Language entry in the TBUPDD.INI file. In all UPDD version 4 releases, a command line parameter (-lang xx) can be passed to all UPDD utility programs as an alternative way to specify the language file to be used. This is particularly useful for utilities that do not have access to the above registry setting, such as the install program (setup.exe). In the following example, dcu –lang ko will show the UPDD Console with the Korean language:
ContactFor further information or technical assistance please
email the technical support team at technical@touch-base.com
and the language co-coordinator |
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