New tool: Localization Helper
One thing that I noticed a few days ago while working on Growl 1.1.4 is that some strings aren’t translated in a couple of the localizations. I reported this on our localization mailing list, but it got me thinking: I could really use a program that would scan a tree of source code and tell me of problems like this.
So I wrote one.
Localization Helper is a command-line tool to walk a tree of source code looking for .strings files, and compare different localizations of them. It reports duplicate (not-translated) strings, and will soon (maybe by the time you read this) report strings that are missing altogether.
Currently, it only compares all other languages to one primary language, which defaults to English. I didn’t feel like making it compare every language to every other language. ☺
The program scans every directory you specify on the command-line. If you don’t give it any arguments, it scans the current working directory. Also, it has some options, which you can see with the –help option.
Here are some excerpts of its output for the Growl 1.1.3 source code:
*** Found problems in Core/Resources/*.lproj/Localizable.strings Duplicate strings in Localizable.strings between English.lproj and cs.lproj: "User went idle" = "User went idle"; "You are now considered idle by Growl" = "You are now considered idle by Growl"; "No activity for more than %d seconds." = "No activity for more than %d seconds."; "Growl was unable to create the socket for Network notifications." = "Growl was unable to create the socket for Network notifications."; "You are no longer considered idle by Growl" = "You are no longer considered idle by Growl"; ⋮
!!! Warning: Localized file Extras/GrowlSafari/de.lproj/InfoPlist.strings is missing !!! Warning: Localized file Extras/GrowlSafari/ja.lproj/InfoPlist.strings is missing *** Could not read plist file at path Extras/GrowlSafari/de.lproj/Localizable.strings *** Could not read plist file at path Extras/GrowlSafari/ja.lproj/Localizable.strings *** Could not read plist file at path Extras/GrowlSafari/pt_BR.lproj/Localizable.strings *** Could not read plist file at path Extras/GrowlSafari/sv.lproj/Localizable.strings
You’ll need to have either Leopard or Python 2.5 + PyObjC (Leopard comes with both) to use the program. (BTW: PyObjC rocks.)
Until I release it sometime later this week (hopefully), I provide two ways to get the program:
- You can download it directly.
- You can clone my repository:
hg clone http://boredzo.org/localization-helper/hg/
Of course, if you clone your repository, then you can easily get updates by running hg pull.
Also, there’s a commits feed, in case you want to stay on top of localization_helper’s development using your feed reader.