XCode Storyboard Localization Duplicate Strings Merge? - ios

I am currently working on an iOS app and localizing it into multiple languages but have faced an annoying (not breaking) issue.
When i would add a new localization for my storyboard xcode will automatically populate the strings, which is very nice. The issue i am having is that i have multiple interfaces which both have a back button. The text on these is of course the same and their translations are as well.
The question i was wondering about, is it possible, without using strings.localizable, to somehow merge multiple object translations into one?
This is how it would currently look:
"Pnu-Ec-HAj.normalTitle" = "Back";
"Rtx-fT-rdc.normalTitle" = "Back";
But it would be way easier if there was a syntax such as
"Pnu-Ec-HAj.normalTitle", "Rtx-fT-rdc.normalTitle" = "Back";
(this syntax is not correct obviously)
I have looked around quite a while but have not found any answers to this question yet.
Thanks for reading.

I'd recommend referencing every text in your storyboard in code, and setting the text on viewDidLoad like, e.g.:
buyButton.titleLabel.text = NSLocalizedString(#"SHOP_BUY_BUTTON_TEXT",#"Button for buying product in detail view");
It's loads of work if you have huge storyboards, but in the end you have a clean Localizable.strings with concise keys and comments, providing necessary context for your translators.
I prefix the key with the section of the app, so for example SHOP_***, USER_SETTINGS_***, etc.
In addition, we use a service like OneSky to organize our translations online and update them from the cloud (not affiliated with them, and it's not without its teething problems either).

Unfortunately the .strings files are key-value files and, by nature, there must be a key (that is composed by the nib ID of the element followed by the property) and the associated string value.
As Apple describes in the precedent link:
The standard strings file format consists of one or more key-value pairs along with optional comments. The key and value in a given pair are strings of text enclosed in double quotation marks and separated by an equal sign.
then, your idea is not supported by the .strings files.
The only way to support that feature is by using the NSLocalizedString in code.

Related

Sets of English Strings combined with Localization that supports UIStoryboard

I have an app that is used to track/manage livestock. It currently supports one species, Sheep. We want to begin supporting multiple different species, like Goats, and Cattle. My first thought was to create something similar to NSLocalizedString(text, comment) like SpeciesString(text, species, comment) which would take the English string and the species name and translate the Sheep term Ram to the Cattle term Bull. And internal to that, I could use NSLocalizedString() to then further translate that to the proper language so that in the future I could support multiple languages as well.
I see that I can pass a tableName to NSLocalizedString() so that it will use a different file other than Localizeable.strings and that would allow me to programmatically pull values from a Spanish language file that is focused on Cattle instead of Sheep (something like Localizeable-sheep.strings and Localizeable-cattle.strings), but that won't help me with all of the text that is in the storyboard.
I know that there is built-in support for localization with the storyboard, but the problem I'm having is that when the text comes to my code, for example in viewDidLoad, it will already have been translated to the other language, for example Spanish. I would prefer to find a way to make the text in my views already have the right Language+Species combination by the time it gets to my code. But even if I did rely on programmatically swapping out the strings to use the right Species, the English will already been changed to Spanish and I'll get Carnero instead of Ram and if I try to pass that through to my SpeciesString() it won't match my underlying data, because my underlying data is keying off of the English version of the text.
Is there a way to create a custom language? I've seen this code that is used to change the localization language on the fly, and it works for swapping between en and es, but I can't create my own fake languages like en-sheep and es-sheep.
Is there either:
a) a way to create my own custom language so that the localization system will just pick my correct Language+Species combination?
or
b) a way to tell the Storyboard which table name/filename to pull strings from? So that instead of just having a strings file for my Main.storyboard be called es.lproj/Main.strings but I could instead have
es.lproj/Main-sheep.strings and es.lproj/Main-cattle.strings?
I think my inability to get my "custom language" to work was just an accidental oversight. I created an es-sheep.lproj/Main.strings and used the other SO post to programmatically set my language to es-sheep and it didn't seem to work...
... but it turned out that I had created those directories and files, but forgotten to add them to the project. Once I manually added them to the project, it started working and I was able to use my custom localizations.

How to set localized texts for Label programmatically?

is there a way to set the text of a Label (Toybox.WatchUi.Text) with a localized string programmatically at runtime? I know how to set a localized string for a label from within the user interface XML files and was wondering if this is also possible from within a Monkey C file, e.g. label.setText("#Strings.localization_key")?
I discovered the Github Account of Garmin where they also provide some example code of Applications and I found the solution in one of the projects.
It's simply Rez.Strings.<string_id> with the ID and the respective translation in one of the string resource files.
However, it does not seem to work to concatenate the localized String with another string and put the concatenation as text in the label. Obviously, the internal String-ID is then displayed rather than the actual string. This behavior occurred for me with the Connect IQ SDK 1.2.5.

iOS Custom Keyboard, Suggestions from txt file

I'm making a custom keyboard for lawyers, and trying to load law related words in suggestion/prediction bar on top the keyboard based on what user types. Just like in stock keyboard. I have searched around but did not find any concrete answer.
I want to display suggestions of law related terms that I have in a txt file, all words are sorted alphabetically.
DEMO
Here is what I have tried:
UILexicon
let myLexicon = NSMutableDictionary()
self.requestSupplementaryLexiconWithCompletion { (theLexicon: UILexicon!) -> Void in
let lexiconEntries = theLexicon.entries
// Completion handler
for item in lexiconEntries {
self.myLexicon.setObject(item.documentText, forKey: item.userInput)
}
}
This code just gives 23 nil objects.
UITextChecker This is an iOS class that is designed to spot spelling errors, which makes it perfect for knowing if a given word is real or not. This is seems to be mainly for autocorrection, not for suggestion. Correct me if I'm wrong please.
I cannot somehow make sense out of these two classes.
How do I tell custom keyboard, "Hey if user enters "V" show the top 3 words that start from V, then if user enter a, fill the suggestion bar with words that start with "Va" and so on.
EDIT: Looks like someone ran into same problem. Here is a quote how they solved it, I will update with code once I finish figuring this out myself.
However, this was far from the truth - in fact, Apple do not allow access to their dictionary full stop, only offering a UILexicon class instead as stated in their docs:
Make use of this class, along with a lexicon of your own design, to provide suggestions and autocorrections as users are entering text.
As it turns out, the UILexicon class only really contains contact names along with any shortcuts (like the default On My Way!) defined on the device. So before writing the logic for a keyboard, you first have to implement your own autocorrect library.
We browsed through a few external projects to see if we could include them in the keyboard - most notably Hunspell, which is used by OpenOffice, and Presage, an intelligent predictive text library.
I spent a long time integrating the C++ libraries with the code, but in the end, in order to keep complexity down, we opted to use a combination of UITextChecker (which provides some basic corrections) and our own custom dictionary, containing a few commonly mispelled words.
Link to the Article
Thanks!
You have to implement your own autocorrection system. UILexicon will only give you shortcuts the user has set up, words that they have added to the iOS Dictionary, and names of contacts. It has no awareness of any words that you yourself provide, whether in a txt file or in any other form.
If you want to use the TOMSSuggestionBar, it appears from the sample code that the onus is on you to convert your txt file into a core data model, and indicate to the suggestion bar how it is to interpret the contents of that model. You may also want to implement the data source protocol to get more fine grained control over the suggestions.
Autocorrection and next word prediction are not solved problems; I suggest you do your own research and find the solution that is best suited to your goals.

Composite C1 console edit button available for non translated data

We are using Composite C1 version 2.1.1 with static C# data. This data is localizable (ILocalizedControlled) and is shown on top of the data tree (TreeDefinitions\GlobalData.xml). Users are able to translate the data to their selected language, but somehow it is possible to "Edit" the data before translating it. This means that when they do it wrong (i.e. in stead of first choosing "Translate Data" and then "Edit", choose "Edit" directly) translated data will appear on the source language site. Which is very annoying because the source data is lost as well.
Seems that when choosing a data item only "Translate Data" should be possible, but now four buttons are shown (Translate Data, Edit, Add and Delete). So I would like to be able to change this behavior, but can't seem to find where or how to influence this.
Hope anyone can help.
somehow it is possible to "Edit" the data before translating it.
This is because in your tree definition (TreeDefinitions\GlobalData.xml), you explicitly use EditDataAction, which does what it is supposed to do: allow editing an item using the standard edit workflow.
I suggest that instead, you create and use a custom workflow for editing items, which might have a logic to allow editing only if the data item is translated in the current language.
I don't have a ready-to-use code for that but you can check samples for custom workflows here.
Also, in the upcoming version 4.1 of Composite C1 (currently beta), you don't need to create tree definitions for static data types. They are available in the C1 Console out of the box. And you can add, edit and delete items of these types there, and the Translation feature on localized types works as expected.
Compare:
The item exposed via a Tree Definition (the issue you mentioned)
And the same item available under "Static Datatypes" (a new feature in 4.1)

Localization of Reporting Services-Reports (.rdl / .rdlc-Files)

i need to localize a Reporting Services-report (.rdlc) and i would like to do it using a ressource-file (.resx).
I found pages like this and that and they use custom code to achieve their target.
But pages like Setting the Report Language Parameter in a URL give me the impression that localization in reports is possible without custom code.
So, it is possible to localize a Reporting Services-report without custom code ?
If so, is there a tutorial that explains how it's done?
What in the report do you want to localize?
values from the database? Those should be retrieved from the database in the appropriate language already
fixed labels and textboxes on the report? I have not yet seen any compelling way to doing this - you can either have
one report "skeleton" / template per language (and pick the one you need)
if the number of elements is manageable, define report parameters which you can set from the calling code, to set the labels and texts
use some custom .NET extension for handling localization
It's not really an awfully pretty picture, indeed - I'd be most interested in better solutions myself! (I typically need to support 3-4 languages for any report - and I'm using only server-based .RDL files, no .RDLC, so any localization that depends on client-side resource files is not usable in my case)
I would add one method when it comes to labels and textboxes:
Create a placeholder element within the textbox and use Expression field to
use a Switch clause , switching on the Language parameter.
It's not superpretty, but also works pretty well for 3-4 languages
I am passing parameters to the report for labels etc, and after adding the parameters to the report (using the menu option Report -> Parameters in VS2008) you can then use the values of these parameters to localise the labels. This is workiiing well enough, although it would be nicer to be abkle to refer to resource keys immediately from your form labels etc.

Resources