Language Handler Problems

[DanRathbun]

@medeek

I tried installing the French version of SketchUp on my same computer that I already have the english version installed, that does not seem to work, only the english version will load.

No you cannot have two editions of the same year release on the same computer. (Both will be overwriting each others registry entries also, possibly causing havoc.)

In related thread: Creating language resource files

@Aerilius

Fun fact: With a start-up parameter -lang=fr the locale can be overriden with whatever string you like – even pfl – and it would then look for a pfl folder.

So you can create a series of desktop icons for testing in the various supported languages, by editing the “Target:” field, of the “Shortcut” tab, of the icon’s “Properties”.

I think you would just add a space and then "-lang=fr" after the pathname to a copy of the standard icon made by the installer. Then of course you’d change the shortcut’s name to indicate French.

Repeat for other languages.

Only run one language test application instance at a time (as they’ll be sharing the same registry hive.)

Note what Thomas says concerning Sketchup::get_locale():

Language handler question

Will always return the locale of the language version of SketchUp you installed. If you want to test your strings you can follow these instructions: Localized Strings · Issue #45 · SketchUp/sketchup-stl · GitHub (We need to document that better.)

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FYI:

Swedish has been added recently. NL was dropped after v8. Russian may have been dropped for a few years after v8.

Related posts elsewhere:

• Tyle Miller on the /lang command line parameter (GitHub: SketchUp STL extension project issues)

Related topic threads:

• Creating language resource files

• Language handler question (GetString vs [] method calls)

• Case sensitivity and LanguageHandler

• Using format string parameter replacement with LanguageHandler

… and from those, other nuggets you should know:

Language handler question

The strings files need to be encoded as UTF-8 without Bit Order Mark. (Just plain UTF-8 in Notepad++, NOT the UTF-8-BOM choice.) Your Ruby files should also be encoded the same, and have a “magic comment” as the first line, like this: # encoding: UTF-8

Case sensitivity and LanguageHandler

Let me try to get the most important theme across to you about the LanguageHandler class. The LanguageHandler class is: dumb, ie, it has no “smarts” nor “intelligence” it is a simple “lookup” function it look’s up a key being an English string in a Ruby Hash, and returns the string value for that key. the string value is the local language that YOU manually translated when you created all the various .strings files for your extension. the LanguageHandler class does NOT translate English “…

Case sensitivity and LanguageHandler

It has two copies of every string in it’s internal hash. But you can eliminate this, by only temporarily creating a LanguageHandler object, extracting the locale string translations to some internal references, and then disposing of the LanguageHandler object. For example, during startup, build up the arrays of your inputbox prompts, defaults, options, etc., and assign references to some persistent object (local constants, or module variables, etc.) require 'langhandler.rb' @lang = LanguageH…