Update: Moving forward with the recommended approach mentioned in the
wiki. As such I've removed the (now obsolete) section comments from the
properties files. The properties are organized by the IDE plugins
(alphabetical when manipulated by eclipse). New properties in the
default bundle are copied into the locale bundles and commented out.
Updated messages in the default bundle will have the updated text copied
to the locale bundles and will then be commented out. So, translators
need only search for commented lines to find messages needing translation.
This is relevant for anyone writing GUI code or performing
localization.
Last Friday I wanted to add and remove some messages while working on
the resource factory wizard (for creating child resources). I quickly
realized that folks out there have been doing localization (thanks!)
because there are now several local-specific files.
This of course makes it more challenging to add/remove/change properties
as each file needs to be touched. So, after a little searching I found
an Eclipse plugin that does just what I wanted, manages all the resource
bundles through a special Eclipse UI. I used this and quickly made the
changes I wanted.
But there was a catch, and I should have seen it coming. The IDE plugin
basically now manages the underlying resource bundle files. After
committing the changes to Git I realized that it had reordered the files
(alphabetically). This completely throws off the previous structure
of the file and the existing comment placement.
Instead of reverting I've decided to promote the change and would like
to solicit feedback. I think moving forward it will be much easier to
use the IDE plugins for resource bundle handling. And I know that
IntelliJ also has a resource bundle feature/plugin. I've started a wiki
page for this, to discuss the different IDE setup and to collect
conventions for working on the resource bundles. It's here:
http://rhq-project.org/display/RHQ/Working+with+the+Resource+Bundles
In short, working with the plugin makes it much easier to manage the
several files in play, to locate undefined properties, and to quickly
compare the default to the localized strings. The alphabetical
structure is actually better, I think, even when inspecting the files
outside of the plugin view, because the hierarchical property names
provide structure already. In fact, the plugin can give you a tree view
using that structure.
So, I propose from this point forward the resource bundles be
manipulated only (at least by devs, if not localizers as well) via
Eclipse or IJ resource bundle plugins. Please let me know your thoughts
and/or proposed conventions. Thanks, Jay
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