UI text internationalization

[sgk]

Internationalization for the user interface (menus, dialogs etc). The UI automatically switches according to the locale. I provided the text catalog for Japanese. You can easily add other languages.

Arduino is not only used for arts, but it is also widely used for education. When used for education, it is a little bit difficult to force students to also learn English in addition to Arduino itself. It is important to let world wide users to be able to use Arduino without learning English. This modification is exactly for this purpose.

The heart of modification is to just add files "I18n.java", "Resources.java", "i18n_update.py" and "i18n_update.sh", for the total of only 155 lines. Other modifications are just to wrap string literals with _(...) function. Concatenations of string and variable are converted to the call to I18n.format() function.

If you want to add a language locale "XX", you have to do as follows:

1. % cd app/src/processing/app
2. % touch Resources_XX.po
3. % ./i18n_update.sh --- You can ignore a warning for "CHARSET" at this time.
4. Edit "Resources_XX.po". Change "CHARSET" to "utf-8". Translate strings to language "XX".
5. % ./i18n_update.sh --- again
6. % git add Resources_XX.*

[damellis]

Wow, very impressive!

I'd like to wait until after the final Arduino 1.0 release comes out before merging this - but it would be great to include after that.

One question / concern: what happens when we change the English version of a particular string? Do we then need to manually update the msgid in all of the language files? Would it be better to use shorter strings as keys and provide an English property file to map those to the appropriate messages?

[sgk]

I am sorry that I pushed unnecessary commits 957999c and 30891e8 as an accident. However, the code is still complete for the purpose of this pull request.

Thank you for considering to merge this pull request. I don't have an opinion for the schedule of merge. I can continue to release my privately built Japanese version binary packages until the official merge.

what happens when we change the English version of a particular string?
Do we then need to manually update the msgid in all of the language files?

"msgid" will be automatically updated by running "i18n_update.sh". However, the translated "msgstr" string will be discarded from the ".po" file. We have to provide the new "msgstr" string either by translating the new "msgid" or by picking up the old "msgstr" from the old ".po" file. Running "git diff -- *.po" helps to pick up the old string.

Would it be better to use shorter strings as keys and provide an English property file to map those to the appropriate messages?

This should be the widely discussed issue in the opensource software communities. It may be "perfect" to manage the all messages as short IDs. We don't lose any translated string by updating English messages. The message catalog should not clash by short words with double meanings (like "home", "back" etc). However, it costs a lot to maintain. Programmers have to see the catalog file in addition to the source code to understand the code. Translators have to see both English catalog file and their native language catalog file.

At this point, I think it should be better to use English string as msgid as we do currently.

[sgk]

I cleaned up the unnecessary commits and merges.

[damellis]

How do you actually specify which language to use / which properties file to load? Does the pull request need any updates for the latest code? If not, I'll go ahead and merge it.

[sgk]

How do you actually specify which language to use / which properties file to load?

See https://github.com/sgk/ArduinoIntl/commit/bfb57073334391d1536f4f3530a7517e047dac75#L7R19.
The ResourceBundle.getBundle(baseName, [locale]) method does everything. The baseName string and locale name string will be concatenated together with "_", and used as the properties file to be loaded. The locale argument can be omitted and defaults to the current system locale.

I set baseName as "processing.app.Resources"

Does the pull request need any updates for the latest code? If not, I'll go ahead and merge it.

No.

Although I followed and updated to your commits after I created this pull request, the pull request can be applied to any versions of your commits after I first made the pull request.

[damellis]

Thanks!

I merged this pull request. It was great to see the Arduino IDE come up in Japanese.

If I add you to the Arduino wiki on Google Code, can you write some instructions about how to create and update a translation file? Feel free to email me at [email protected] to coordinate.

Thanks again!

[sgk]

Thank you! All Japanese users will love the UI in native language.

Of course, I can write instructions about creating a new language catalog file.