Localizing Frameworks

Oxygen XML Developer plugin supports framework localization (translating framework actions, buttons, and menu entries to various languages). This lets you develop and distribute a framework to users that speak other languages without changing the distributed framework.

To localize the content of a framework, create a translation.xml file that contains all the translation (key, value) mappings. The translation.xml has the following format:

<translation>
    <languageList>
        <language description="English" lang="en_US"/>
        <language description="German" lang="de_DE"/>
        <language description="French" lang="fr_FR"/>
    </languageList>
    <key value="list">
        <comment>List menu item name.</comment>
        <val lang="en_US">List</val>
        <val lang="de_DE">Liste</val>
        <val lang="fr_FR">Liste</val>
    </key>  
......................
</translation> 

Oxygen XML Developer plugin matches the GUI language with the language set in the translation.xml file. If this language is not found, the first available language declared in the languagelist tag for the corresponding framework is used.

Add the directory where this file is located to the Classpath list corresponding to the edited document type.

After you create this file, you can use the keys defined in it to customize the name and description of the following:

• Framework actions
• Menu entries
• Contextual menus
• Toolbars
• Static CSS content

For example, if you want to localize the bold action, open the Preferences dialog box and go to Document Type Association. Use the New or Edit button to open the Document type configuration dialog box, go to Author ⇒ Actions, and rename the bold action to ${i18n(translation_key)}. Actions with a name format other than ${i18n(translation_key)} are not localized. Translation_key corresponds to the key from the translation.xml file.

Now open the translation.xml file and edit the translation entry if it exists or create one if it does not exist. This example presents an entry in the translation.xml file:

<key value="translation_key">
        <comment>Bold action name.</comment>
        <val lang="en_US">Bold</val>
        <val lang="de_DE">Bold</val>
        <val lang="fr_FR">Bold</val>
    </key>

To use a description from the translation.xml file in the Java code used by your custom framework, use the new ro.sync.ecss.extensions.api.AuthorAccess.getAuthorResourceBundle() API method to request the associated value for a certain key. This allows all the dialog boxes that you present from your custom operations to have labels translated in multiple languages.

You can also reference a key directly in the CSS content:

title:before{
    content:"${i18n(title.key)} : ";
}