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['n ddrylliog]

Any tips about Internationalization ?

For my "Digibots!" population evolution project, I coded and wrote messages in English, but my examiners will be french-speaking (like me). But I don't want to translate everything and lose the original English version. So I suppose there's a way to internationalize that. Anyone experienced that before ?

Note : I post that while I'm investigating the matter.. you could save my time by sharing your experience

['n ddrylliog]

Okay, fully working now.

The "Externalize Strings" feature of Eclipse is stunning !
Set up perfectly in a few minutes.. And it choose automatically from Locale (well, I actually had to tune the code).

Code:

/**
 * "Digibots" sourcecode is licenced under the
 * CeCILL license
 *
 * Made early 2007 by Amos Wenger, Olivier Charvet
 * and Quentin Merleau
 */
package org.digibots.world;

import java.util.Locale;
import java.util.MissingResourceException;
import java.util.ResourceBundle;

public class Messages {
   
    private static final ResourceBundle RESOURCE_BUNDLE;
    static {
        String BUNDLE_NAME = "org.digibots.world.messages"; //$NON-NLS-1$
        ResourceBundle bundle = null;
        try {
            bundle = ResourceBundle.getBundle(BUNDLE_NAME+"_"+Locale.getDefault().getCountry());
        } catch(Exception e) {
            System.out.println("Falling back to default language, because translation "
                    +Locale.getDefault().getDisplayName()+" hasn't been found");
            bundle = ResourceBundle.getBundle(BUNDLE_NAME);
        }
        RESOURCE_BUNDLE = bundle;
    }
   
    private Messages() {
    }
   
    public static String getString(String key) {
        try {
            return RESOURCE_BUNDLE.getString(key);
        } catch (MissingResourceException e) {
            return '!' + key + '!';
        }
    }
}

Please re-use if you need it !

[horati]

OMG, boo... I just finished looking up these APIs from memory and typing this LOL


At least for simple resource bundling, here are the APIs (without any attempt to organize them coherently or optimally):

Code:

import java.util.ResourceBundle;
import java.text.MessageFormat;
...
Locale currentLocale=...;
ResourceBundle myResources = ResourceBundle.getBundle("MyResources", currentLocale);
StringBuffer userMessage = new StringBuffer();

String unformatted = myResources.getString( "message-1" );
MessageFormat formatter = new MessageFormat(unformatted,currentLocale);
formatter.format(arguments, userMessage, null );

unformatted = myResources.getString( "message-2" );
formatter = new MessageFormat(unformatted,currentLocale);
formatter.format(arguments, userMessage, null );

unformatted = myResources.getString( "message-3" );
formatter = new MessageFormat(unformatted,currentLocale);
formatter.format(arguments, userMessage, new String[] { calculatedValue1, calculatedValue2 } );

return userMessage.toString();

All the examples include the ability for an external property file to reformat dates and money.  The last example shows the ability to reorder values that your program must calculate because different languages choose to display them in different order.

Edit: added the import for MessageFormat

['n ddrylliog]

Thanks  And sorry for the false alarm

[horati]

Actually, I did realize after posting that my example included the correct combination with MessageFormat which is very useful depending on the selection of languages in your translation domain.

[Marvin Fröhlich]

Looks cool. I will make use of this technique when I come to this point in my game. If you would not have posted this here I might have written a worse implementation myself in the future. So thanks for the info .

Marvin

['n ddrylliog]

Looks cool. I will make use of this technique when I come to this point in my game. If you would not have posted this here I might have written a worse implementation myself in the future. So thanks for the info .

BTW, I'm willing to do any french translations needed for any (well, Java+Xith3D) game. (Don't do that yourself if you don't feel comfortable with the french language).