Tovek Tools localisation

Tovek Tools can be localised by editing a text file with the user interface (UI) strings. No other application or utility is necessary, and localisation and testing can be done by anyone. There are two files needed for full localisation - one for the setup and the other one for all tt applications when they are running. These files are called - and have the extension - UIL, which stands for User Interface Localised. Files that are used as a source for the localisation are called UIO, UI Original. UIO files are generated from the default user interface and are in English.

There are three types of information in the loc files: dialog box records, string table entries (strings that might appear anywhere in the application), and menu items. Every entry is on one line, and various "commands" and values are separated by the <Tab> character. Menu items are slightly different because they map an "old" - ie. English - command name to a different one, so there is both an old menu string (be careful not to change it), then a <Tab>, and then a localised menu string. Furthermore, there are two types of menu items - first one is for the top menu bar, and another one is for other commands in the popup menus. Menu items are at the end of UIO files.

Localisation download

The archive needed for the localisation is available at the download page. It is better to look at its contents first because many things might be easy to understand afterwards. Into this archive we only add files for newer tt versions, so it is also a guide in which version something was added or changed, and when it has been localised.

For an example of full localisation please look at the DE (German) directory for the tt version 3.17. There are all the dialog boxes, strings, and menu items that need to be localised, plus everything for the setup as well. If in doubt or if some problems arise, please look there first.

Tovek Tools applications

The main tt loc file is in the <tt>\support\loc directory and its name is tt_x3.uil. This file exists even in the English version of the product because if there was a different UI language before, the original file would not be replaced during the installation of the English UI. If you are doing a localisation of tt, your first task is to take an UIO file, translate it, rename to .UIL, and put it into the right place in the installation tree so you can test everything. Every time you do any changes to tt_x3.uil it is recommended to completely restart Tovek Tools.

As we expect that localisation will not be performed by someone completely new to this kind of work, there will follow only a brief overview of the UIO/UIL files. The rest, we hope, can be seen from the files itself - they contain comments as well - both in English and in the fully localised German UI.

All entries in those files are separated by the <Tab> characters - please take care not to remove them or replace them with spaces. The contents of the UIL file is optional: for what is not there an English default will be used. In theory all entries that will not be localised can be safely removed, but if you leave them there the file will be more readable. Then it is also not needed to localise everything - commands such as File/Open probably should be, but some error messages going to logs probably do not have to be in your language, because most likely they will only rarely be used; and also when possibly sending these messages to Tovek for analysis, you don't have to translate them back to English.

At the start of file there are strings common to most of the dialog box buttons such as OK and Cancel. Then there are all dialog boxes, with their captions, non-standard common buttons (such as Cancel changed to Close), and all the dialog box strings that can be localised.

The second is a section with various strings. Strings are separated into many groups and there are comments for most of these groups.

The last section contains the menu commands. There are two types of menu commands: first one is for the top menu bar, and another one is for other commands in all the menus. These commands are mapping an "old" (English) command name to a new one, so there is both an old menu string and a new one, separated by the <Tab> character. Please be careful not to change the original English string as these are used for search&replace of all menu commands when a tt application starts. And again, if in doubt, look into the DE localisation for hints how it works.

Tovek Tools setup

Setup loc file is usually called setup.uil. The structure of the file is the same as for the main loc file, but there is no section for the menus as the setup itself contains no menus.

One difference is when you test the localised setup. The loc file must be called setup.uil and it has to be placed in the same folder as the tt*.exe installer. Then launch the installation. No matter which language is selected for the setup - at the start of the setup, or by renaming the EXE as explained here - the user interface will be localised using the supplied setup.uil. The other settings - the "real" settings, such as the UI language for tt - cannot be changed by setup.uil. An example: if you select EN as a language for installation and provide your setup.uil in German, the setup will display messages in German, but tt will be configured to run in English.

Please note that when you look into the downloaded loc archive the setup.uil files are renamed and have names such as setup_en.uil. For your testing, however, you can use only the name setup.uil. Renaming of files is done in Tovek, when we actually create the installation.

New versions

With all major versions of Tovek Tools comes the updated loc archive, where you can check which entries were changed. This is done by comparing UIO files of the current tt release with the latest version that you know you have localised in the past. Even when you do not localise each and every tt version - as is certainly not needed for various test releases - most of the UI will still be in the correct language because only the changed elements will be in English. Not only for this reason it is a good idea to put some comment at the start of the translated UIL file, such as who translated it and which tt version was the current one.

There are possibly many programs that can compare two text files - UIO files are a plain text files - and one of these programs is WinDiff, which is a part MS Visual Studio/C++. If you have difficulties comparing versions of the files, please contact us and we will find a solution for you.

Please send the files to Tovek

After you localise a version of Tovek Tools it would be nice to send the loc files to Tovek so we can add them to the standard setup. This way your customers would have one working setup, without any need to copy some additional files after they install the software.

There is one more item that can be localised and/or changed, and it is a readme.htm file installed with Tovek Tools. Fell free to modify it and to include links to your website, your company phone numbers etc., if you are able to provide support in your area. It is a good idea not to mention any version numbers so that the file does not have to be updated very often.

Tips and notes

Localisation archive contains not only UIO and UIL files, but also resource.h files from various tt projects. These files can be useful for finding ID names for some strings, for example, so that you might have a better idea what is a purpose of a given entry. For instance, when trying to localise string number 24374, you might find out that its ID is IDS_FileNotFound, which is saying more than only the number and the actual message, and so in some cases it might help you to understand better what is the purpose of some message. Plus for those who know how to deal with RC files it is no problem to supply them as well, and if in doubt you can always contact Tovek.

Sometimes you will not be able to fit a long text into a button, for example, because a text in English is usually shorter than the same text in another language. In these cases please try to change the text slightly, such as using only 'Add' instead of 'Add One Source'.

String number 111 is little bit special because it has to contain one of the folder names from the common directory. This setting controls the default language used for various things, such as when creating a new source, and so if it has to be modified, be careful.

UIL file is used to set the Help/About warning (entry d.100.306), even for English, because this way you can use more than 256 characters for a string, which seems to be a limit in RC files.

Menu commands, dialog box entries, and some strings might contain character & (ampersand), for example: &File. This usually denotes accelerator for given string, as is common in Windows, and in one dialog box and one pulldown menu all the accelerators should be unique.