Translating Palmphi into your language

Most of the strings in Palmphi are contained in the file help.txt. This help supports now HTML tags and some parts are completely in HTML format.

The main file ("help.txt") following structure :

# comments # comments LANGUAGE Spanish Title1 =>Explanation Title2 =>Explanation =>(Can have more than one line) . . . TitleN =>Explanation INCLUDE moreHelp.txt LANGUAGE French Title1 =>Explanation in french for Title2 =>This explanation contains <b>bold</b> and <i>italic</i> html tags Title2 =>Explanation in french for Title2 . . . TitleN =>Explanation in french for TitleN TitleHTML =><h4> TitleHTML </h4> =>This is a full HTML code<br> =>You need to specifify tag Br <br> =>at the end of each paragraph. LANGUAGE German . . same for each language . . << Add additional languages here >> LANGUAGE English TitleA =>Explanation in english for TitleATitle2 =>Explanation in english for Title2TitleA2 =>Explanation in english for TitleA2Title1 =>Explanation in english for Title1INCLUDE PalmApi.txt

INCLUDE has the same functionality as '#include' in C. PalmApi.txt is included at the end of help.txt

Palmphi loads strings as follows: Given a keyword (let's say "Title1") it looks first in your default language, if it founds the string, the explanation is displayed (explanation is composed of all the lines following the entry title which begin with "=>"). In this case Title1 exists in every language, so it would always be localized for every language.

If a given string is not found in the default language then it is load from the english part of the file.

When Palmphi loads a help text, it treats the code as HTML if the first line begins with <H4>. If this is not the case, each line gets a "<BR>" appended.

Adding a new language

To add a new language simply add the line "LANGUAGE <language_name>" before the definition of the english language. Then add all the sections you want to translate. The entries you don't add will appear in english.

Adding entries to a language

If you are already using your local language and you find some texts still appearing in english, is probably due to new help items which aren't still translated. You can open the help file and search this string, once you find it copy the whole entry to your languages section and translate the entry. After restarting Palmphi you should get the new text translated.

Modifying entries

After modifying anything you will have to restart Palmphi in order to see the updated data.

Format of the entries

There are some predefined formats for the entry titles :

Line ends with "()" : Function which are displayed in the class browser
Line ends with ":" : This is a string resource used in the program
Line ends with "=": A property
Line ends with ">>": An example (displayed under the html help in the class browser)
ExtraGroups: This topic contains all the extra API-sections. Each section has following format:

%s1:%s2 where %s1 is the name of the section and %s2 the name of the topic containing the functions of this section

Distribution

Many people are glad seeing a program in their mother tongue, so if you translated a part of Palmphi and want me to include it in the next Palmphi release, send me the translation.