ScriptForge.L10N service

This service provides a number of methods related to the translation of strings with minimal impact on the program's source code. The methods provided by the L10N service can be used mainly to:

• Create POT files that can be used as templates for translation of all strings in the program.

• Get translated strings at runtime for the language defined in the Locale property.

The acronym L10N stands for Localization and refers to a set of procedures for translating software to a specific country or region.

PO files have long been promoted in the free software community as a means to providing multilingual user interfaces. This is accomplished through the use of human-readable text files with a well defined structure that specifies, for any given language, the source language string and the localized string.

The main advantage of the PO format is dissociation of the programmer and the translator. PO files are independent text files, so the programmer can send POT template files to translators, who will then translate their contents and return the translated PO files for each supported language.

The L10N service is based on the GNU implementation of PO (portable object) files. To learn more about this file format, visit GNU gettext Utilities: PO Files.

This service implements the methods listed below:

• AddText: Used by the programmer to build a set of strings that will be translated later.

• AddTextsFromDialog: Extracts all strings from a Dialog service instance.

• ExportToPOTFile: Exports the strings added by the AddText method to a POT file.

• GetText: Gets the translated strings at runtime.

Note that the first two methods are used to build a set of translatable strings and export them to a POT file. However, it is not mandatory to create POT files using these methods. Since they are text files, the programmer could have created them using any text editor.

Service invocation

Before using the L10N service the ScriptForge library needs to be loaded or imported:

• Basic macros require to load ScriptForge library using the following statement:
GlobalScope.BasicLibraries.loadLibrary("ScriptForge")

• Python scripts require an import from scriptforge module:
from scriptforge import CreateScriptService

There are several ways to invoke the L10N service using up to five optional arguments that specify the folder where PO files are stored, the locale and encoding to be used, as well as a fallback PO file and its encoding.

CreateScriptService("L10N", opt foldername: str, opt locale: str, encoding: str = "UTF-8", opt locale2: str, encoding2: str = "UTF-8"): svc

foldername: The folder containing the PO files. It must be expressed in the FileSystem.FileNaming notation.

locale: A string in the form "la-CO" (language-COUNTRY) or in the form "la" (language) only.

encoding: The character set to be used. The default encoding is "UTF-8".

locale2: A string specifying the fallback locale to be used in case the PO file corresponding to the locale defined the locale parameter does not exist. This parameter is expressed in the form "la-CO" (language-COUNTRY) or "la" (language) only.

encoding2: The character set of the fallback PO file corresponding to the locale2 argument. The default encoding is "UTF-8".

To learn more about the names of character sets, visit IANA's Character Set page. Be aware that Collabora Office does not implement all existing character sets.

The following example instantiates the L10N service without any optional arguments. This will only enable the AddText and ExportToPOTFile methods, which is useful for creating POT files.

      GlobalScope.BasicLibraries.loadLibrary("ScriptForge")
      Dim myPO As Variant
      Set myPO = CreateScriptService("L10N")
    

The example below specifies the folder containing the PO files. Because the locale is not defined, the service instance will use the locale defined for the Collabora Office user interface, which is the same locale defined in the OfficeLocale property of the Platform service.

      Set myPO = CreateScriptService("L10N", "C:\myPOFiles")
    

The example above will result in an runtime error if the PO file corresponding to the OfficeLocale locale does not exist in the specified folder.

In the example below, the locale is explicitly defined to be Belgian French ("fr-BE"), hence the service will load the file "fr-BE.po" from the folder "C:\myPOFiles". If the file does not exist, an error will occur.

      Set myPO = CreateScriptService("L10N", "C:\myPOFiles", "fr-BE", "UTF-8")
    

To avoid errors, it is possible to specify a preferred and a fallback locale and encoding. The following example will first try to load the file "fr-BE.po" from the specified folder and if it does not exist, the file "en-US.po" will be loaded.

      Set myPO = CreateScriptService("L10N", "C:\myPOFiles", "fr-BE", "UTF-8", "en-US", "UTF-8")
    

PO files must be named in the form "la-CO.po" or "la.po", where "la" refers to the language and "CO" is the country. Some examples are: "en-US.po", "fr-BE.po" or "fr.po".

It is recommended to free resources after use:

      Set myPO = myPO.Dispose()
    

The examples above can be translated to Python as follows:

      from scriptforge import CreateScriptService
      myPO = CreateScriptService('L10N')
    

      myPO = CreateScriptService('L10N', r'C:\myPOFiles')
    

      myPO = CreateScriptService('L10N', r'C:\myPOFiles', 'fr-BE')
    

      myPO = CreateScriptService('L10N', r'C:\myPOFiles', 'fr-BE', 'UTF-8', 'en-US', 'UTF-8')
      myPO = myPO.Dispose()
    

Several instances of the L10N service may coexist. However, each instance must use a separate directory for its PO files.

Properties

AddText

Adds a new entry in the list of localizable strings. It must not exist yet.

The method returns True if successful.

svc.AddText(context: str = '', msgid: str = '', comment: str = ''): bool

context: The key to retrieve the translated string with the GetText method. This parameter has a default value of "".

msgid: The untranslated string, which is the text appearing in the program code. It must not be empty. The msgid becomes the key to retrieve the translated string via GetText method when context is empty.

The msgid string may contain any number of placeholders (%1 %2 %3 ...) for dynamically modifying the string at runtime.

comment: Optional comment to be added alongside the string to help translators.

The example below creates a set of strings in English:

      myPO.AddText(, "This is a string to be included in a POT file")
      myPO.AddText("CTX1", "A string with a context")
      myPO.AddText(, "Provide a String value", Comment := "Do not translate the word String")
    

      myPO.AddText(msgid = 'This is a string to be included in a POT file')
      myPO.AddText('CTX1', 'A string with a context')
      myPO.AddText(msgid = 'Provide a String value', comment = 'Do not translate the word String')
    

AddTextsFromDialog

Automatically extracts strings from a dialog and adds them to the list of localizable text strings. The following strings are extracted:

• The title of the dialog.

• The caption of the following control types: Button, CheckBox, FixedLine, FixedText, GroupBox and RadioButton.

• Static strings in ListBoxes and ComboBoxes.

• The tooltip or help text displayed when the mouse hovers over the control.

The method returns True if successful.

The dialog from which strings will be extracted must not be open when the method is called.

When a L10N service instance is created from an existing PO file, use the GetTextsFromL10N method from the Dialog service to automatically load all translated strings into the dialog.

svc.AddTextsFromDialog(dialog: svc): bool

dialog: a Dialog service instance corresponding to the dialog from which strings will be extracted.

The following example extracts all strings from the dialog "MyDialog" stored in the "Standard" library and exports them to a POT file:

      oDlg = CreateScriptService("Dialog", "GlobalScope", "Standard", "MyDialog")
      myPO = CreateScriptService("L10N")
      myPO.AddTextsFromDialog(oDlg)
      myPO.ExportToPOTFile("en-US.pot")
    

      dlg = CreateScriptService("Dialog", "GlobalScope", "Standard", "Dialog1")
      myPO = CreateScriptService("L10N")
      myPO.AddTextsFromDialog(dlg)
      myPO.ExportToPOTFile("en-US.pot")
    

ExportToPOTFile

Exports a set of untranslated strings as a POT file.

To build a set of strings you can use either a succession of AddText method calls, or by a successful invocation of the L10N service with the foldername argument present. It is also possible to use a combination of both techniques.

The method returns True if successful.

svc.ExportToPOTFile(filename: str, header: str = '', encoding:str = 'UTF-8'): bool

filename: The output file in FileSystem.FileNaming notation.

header: Comments that will be added on top of the generated POT file.

Do not include any leading "#" characters. If you want the header to be broken into multiple lines, insert escape sequences (\n) where relevant. A standard header will be added alongside the text specified in the header argument.

encoding: The character set to be used (Default = "UTF-8").

       ' Basic
       myPO.ExportToPOTFile("myFile.pot", Header := "First line of the header\nSecond line of the header")
    

      # Python
      myPO.ExportToPOTFile('myFile.pot', header = 'First line of the header\nSecond line of the header')
    

The generated file should successfully pass the msgfmt --check GNU command.

GetText

Gets the translated string corresponding to the given msgid argument.

A list of arguments may be specified to replace the placeholders (%1, %2, ...) in the string.

If no translated string is found, the method returns the untranslated string after replacing the placeholders with the specified arguments.

This method can be called either by the full name GetText or by the shortcut _ (a single underscore):

svc.GetText(msgid: str, args: any[0..*]): str

svc._(msgid: str, args: any[0..*]): str

In the ScriptForge library, all methods starting with the "_" character are reserved for internal use only. However, the shortcut _ used for GetText is the only exception to this rule, hence it can be safely used in Basic and Python scripts.

msgid: The untranslated string, which is the text appearing in the program code. It must not be empty. It may contain any number of placeholders (%1 %2 %3 ...) that can be used to dynamically insert text at runtime.

Besides using a single msgid string, this method also accepts the following formats:

• The context string with which the method will retrieve the msgid in the PO file, or;

• A combination context|msgid, instructing the method to retrieve the msgid using specified context value. The second part of the argument is used to improve code readability.

args: Values to be inserted into the placeholders. Any variable type is allowed, however only strings, numbers and dates will be considered.

Consider the following code is running on a Collabora Office installation with locale set to "es-ES". Additionally, there is a file "es-ES.po" inside the specified folder that translates the string passed to the GetText method:

      myPO = CreateScriptService("L10N", "C:\myPOFiles\")
      myPO.GetText("Welcome %1! Hope you enjoy this program", "John")
      ' "¡Bienvenido John! Espero que disfrutes de este programa"
    

      myPO = CreateScriptService('L10N', r"C:\myPOFiles")
      myPO.GetText('Welcome %1! Hope you enjoy this program', 'John')
      # "¡Bienvenido John! Espero que disfrutes de este programa"
    

All ScriptForge Basic routines or identifiers that are prefixed with an underscore character "_" are reserved for internal use. They are not meant be used in Basic macros or Python scripts.