localization

Next version: Globalization + Save and Print Colour Images 2

This entry was posted in General and tagged ascgen ascii art color colour localization preview print on by

Just as a heads-up, the next version of the program will include the ability to translate it into whatever language you want (or change words to make them sound rude).

Originally I planned to use the inbuilt globalization stuff, but it’s unbelievable how complex it makes everything. Instead I’ve come up with my own easy system that piggybacks on the existing resource class and loads the strings from an external xml file.

The current full list of translation strings is here:
http://ascgen2.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/ascgen2/ascgen2/translation.xml

You can use any or all of these by translating the strings inside the tags.

It will also finally come with saving to colour image files, and printing in colour. Which was much harder then the translation stuff.

I’m not sure whether to have the version number as 0.8.3 or 0.9.0. Maybe 0.8.5?

Plus, I’ve changed http://www.jmsoftware.co.uk/ into a blog so I can start posting more off topic stuff without cluttering this one up, and I hope to start posting regularly soon. It also hosts a few random little programs.

Bugs, and languages and Xml

This entry was posted in General and tagged localization on by

Found a big and obvious bug with the batch conversions settings form, where half of the text was missing. Either nobody reported it, or nobody noticed, so I’m not going to rush a new version out today. Seriously, if you ever find anything then please just click on the “report a bug” link over to the right and tell me about it (you don’t need to log in to post).

While I was there, I finished formalizing the localization strings so it will be easy for people to translate into other languages. It’ll just need people to go through and edit a copy of this file, translating the values fields:
 <data name="String in English">
  <value>String in other language</value>
 </data>

Not yet sure exactly how it’s going to work. Maybe through setting up a small wiki-style thing so anyone interested can just edit the page for their language.

In other code, there have been a lot of internal changes so all the default settings are in one place rather then buried in the code. I’m working on a way to store them in an xml file (saving xml done, no problem), and load them when the program starts (loading xml? convoluted and confusing).