Language Handler Problems

[DanRathbun]

@medeek

This language handler does not seem very robust, I might just have to build my own like Garry K. has done.

As I mentioned in some of the other threads …

@DanRathbun

the LanguageHandler class uses twice the amount of memory just loading your translated strings into a Ruby hash does.

…

@DanRathbun

I think the Ruby’s compiled parser is faster at parsing a ruby script with just a hash definition, then LanguageHandler’s Ruby parser parsing “strings” files.

I find LanguageHandler’s implementation awkward and clunky.

Keep in mind the interpreter parser is compiled C while the LanguageHandler class’ parser is interpreted Ruby.
…

@DanRathbun

For these reasons, I do not use the LanguageHandler class at all. I just write Ruby files (that are part of the extension’s files,) that define a language hash (within my extension module) that uses short symbol keys.

I’m not sure if I have posted an example, but basically I just create a “lang” subfolder of my plugin folder, and populate it with .rb scripts that use a naming syntax like “#{LANG}.rb”, where the plugin constant LANG is either a specific language the user has selected in my plugin’s options dialog (which can be even languages the SketchUp doesn’t even ship using,) or (upon first run) the string returned by Sketchup::get_locale().

In the main plugin file, I’d define some lang constants used by all languages:

# encoding: UTF-8
module Author::SomePlugin

  KEY ||= Module.nesting.name[0].gsub('::','_') # qualified registry / plist key

  LANGCODES ||= Hash[
    :english,'en-US', :french,'fr', :italian,'it',
    :german,'de', :spanish,'es', :japan,'ja',
    :korean,'ko', :china,'zh-CN', :taiwan,'zh-TW',
    :portbraz,'pt-BR', :dutch,'nl', :russian,'ru'
  ]

  LANG ||= Sketchup.read_default(KEY,'lang') 
  if LANG.nil? # has not been set (1st run)
    LANG = Sketchup::get_locale # set it
    Sketchup.write_default(KEY,'lang',LANG) # store it
  end
  LANGFILE ||= File.join( File.dirname(__FILE__),"lang/#{LANG}.rb" )
  load(LANGFILE) rescue load( File.join( File.dirname(__FILE__),'lang/en-US.rb' ))

end

Then the contents of the language ruby scripts for "lang/en-US.rb" would be like:

# encoding: UTF-8
module Author::SomePlugin

  OPTIONS_PROMPTS ||= {
    :lang => 'Language',
    :data => 'Data Path',
    :save => 'Save Path:',
    # etc., etc., ...
  }

  OPTIONS_ITEMS ||= {
    :lang => LANGCODES.join('|'),
  }

  STATUSBAR ||= {
    :tool1 => 'This tool does such and so forth',
    :tool2 => 'This tool does more than any other'
    # etc., etc., ...
  }

  # ETC., ETC., ...

end

Then I copy the english RB file a number of times and edit it and rename it for other languages.