I am trying to localize my wp7 application and I need to have different strings for de-DE and de-AT because there are some language differences between those two cultures even though the basic settings are the same.
I did the following to achieve this:
Created an AppResources.resx file for the default English text
Created an AppResources.de-DE.resx file for the German text
Created an AppResources.de-AT.resx file for the German text for Austrian sub culture
in the Assembly Information... in the project properties I set English as my Neutral Language
I closed the solution, opened up my project.csproj file and changed the <SupportedCultures/> to the following: <SupportedCultures>de-AT;de-DE</SupportedCultures>
I added a new Class LocalizedStrings, registered it in Application.Resources in App.xaml and changed the output string accordingly.
Both the Emulator as the handset are set to Austrian Locale, System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.ToString(); returns de-AT, but regardless of that the texts defined in AppResources.de-DE.resx are used and not the ones defined in the file for the Austrian culture.
Any idea how I might solve this issue?
You should check the CultureInfo.CurrentUICulture, not the CurrentCulture!
That is the property that controls what resources get loaded for interface!
The value of CurrentUICulture should match the one selected in the phone/emulator Settings -> Region+Language -> Display Language.
Ideally, you can always override the system imposed CurrentUICulture by setting a different CultureInfo on Thread.CurrentUICulture.
Related
So I understand how Multilingual App Toolkit 4.0 works and it works great for my Xamarin.Android project. The default language is English, and with MAT we've translated it to Dutch and German.
Then comes the translator along and asks about how to make changes to the English texts, which is my source texts and the basis of all translations. The source texts (English) are in a file Resources\values\Strings.xml. Alter a string there, would invalidate all translations (Dutch and German).
Besides invalidation, I can't send my translator the normal .xlf file, because all source texts are in the Strings.xml file.
So my question is, how can my translator alter the source language texts in the most easy way (preferably with an .xlf file)?
The short answer is that you can't. The design of the Multilingual App Toolkit focused on providing easy support for translation into other languages. The concept of providing source content editing was not considered.
That said, as a workaround you could add another variant of English. For Android apps, the default is English Neutral (en), so adding en-US or en-UK would create the XLIFF file that your translator / proofer could edit using the same tooling (e.g.: Multilingual Editor) to provide source content proofing. If using the same translator for proofing and translating, they could apply the translation based on the update English string to the Dutch and German files.
When you receive the XLF files back ensure all the resource in the proofing English XLF (e.g.: en-US) are marked as need review, translated or final (basically anything except 'New'). The reason is that the Multilingual App Toolkit does not include untranslated resource in the generated target resource file. (The reason is for language fallback purposes in Windows apps).
Now you can import the proofed English file with the other XLF file and build. Copy the entire contents from the proofed English resource file(s) overtop the original source files (recommend Comparing first). When you next build, you will receive warnings that the source resources have changed after the translation, but you can just review and clear those warning in the editor, or clear them globally within the Visual Studio IDE.
I am using Xamarin.Forms, shared project template.
Here, I add controls to the content page such as a Label through say framework provided StackLayout.
Now in target apps - say for iOS/Andriod, I just need to set some text for this label. I have some platform specific code where I want to change the text value for the Label created in Shared Project.
How to do that?
I understand, Custom Renderers could be used. Is there any straight forward way that I am missing here?
You can, of course, use custom renderers... but imho it would be an overkill.
I'd use OnPlatform method - something like:
myLabel.Text = Device.OnPlatform<string>("text for iOS", "text for Android", "text for Windows Phone");
You can also do the same from XAML if you wish, like shown in this article (search "OnPlatform" there):
http://developer.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/xamarin-forms/xaml-for-xamarin-forms/essential_xaml_syntax/
If the text you need is dynamic and you need to set it at run time from platform-specific project, than you need to assign your Label to some variable in the shared project and then reference this variable from platform projects.
I'm trying to add culture specific translations for the strings in my Resources.resx file and can't find anywhere to do this in visual studios.
Create a new resource file with an additional suffix that matches the culture string you're looking for.
For example, if you'd like to have translations associated with the neutral French culture ("fr") then create a resource file named Resources.fr.resx with your translations in it.
This msdn link says that to add more language to your windows phone app, you need to make changes in the supported culture box in the properties page, but I can't find such box in the properties page as well as manifest page.
I tried searching all the tabs and I have uploaded the screenshots of properties page as well as manifest, but I'm not able to find the required box.
I have developed an application and updated on the store but only English (US) is the supported language and I'm not able to localize the app.
I'm not able to add screenshots as it requires more that 10 reputation.
Adding resource files
You do not specify what languages you support in the project properties any more. You only specify the default language in the app manifest.
You have to manually add one .resw file for each language you support. The files must all be named Resources.resw and must be placed in a sub-folder, named after the language, under a “Strings” folder in your project.
Accessing resources from xaml
You access the resources by setting the x:Uid property of a control to a unique name. Unfortunately the x:Uid property is not recognized by the properties window, neither in VisualStudio nor in Blend, so you must hand code it directly in the xaml file.
Example:
<TextBlock x:Uid="MyTextBlock" /> <Button x:Uid="MyButton" />
<TextBlock x:Uid="MyTextBlock" />
You must then add a resource with the uid-name with dot-notation, that is, after the dot you write the name of the property of the control in which you want the text.
Reference : http://www.jayway.com/2014/04/22/windows-phone-8-1-for-developers-localizing-apps/
I'm having a little trouble getting localized resources files to work on Windows Phone 7. Here's what I'm doing:
Create a resource file, say "Strings.resx" (Build Action: Compile)
Create a key, say "TestKey" with a default value of empty string
Add a English resource file in the same folder with a value of "some English string": Strings.en-us.resx (Build Action: Embedded Resource)
Add a Japanese resource file in the same folder with a value of "some Japanese string": Strings.ja-jp.resx (Build Action: Embedded Resource)
In my PC Silverlight, WPF Apps that works fine when I change the Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture. But in the phone I always seem to be getting the value that's in the Strings.resx file - an empty string.
I have tried using the designer generated code and wiring up the resource manager by hand and it does not seem to matter. Here's my code:
Type t = typeof(Strings);
_resourceManager = new ResourceManager(
t.Namespace + "." + t.Name,
t.Assembly);
_resourceManager.GetString("TestKey");
Tell me localized resources are supported on the phone... ;> What am I doing wrong? Thanks!
Update: Thanks Olivier for forwarding the link. I saw that as well but missed an important step. I didn't add the "SupportedCultures" node to my csproj. Made all the difference - hoping someone else doesn't loose two hours trying to figure this out like I did.
<SupportedCultures>de-DE;es-ES;</SupportedCultures>
Of course, localized resources are supported on the phone:
How to: Build a Localized Application for Windows Phone
I wrote a blog post that provides links to a bunch of Globalization / Localization guides for WP7. There is a Windows Phone 7 in 7 Training video that helped me understand the basics. After that it was simply a matter of learning how to do databinding:
The MSDN article shows you how to
setup the files and create the
LocalizedStrings class, but they then
assume that you know how to use that
class for data binding. Visual Studio
2010 and Silverlight handle data
binding differently than Winforms, and
it gets even more confusing since XAML
also has it’s own definition of
Resources that are different then the
.NET resources we just created.
Silverlight also uses the term
Resource to refer to files that use
the the Build Action of "Content”, as
these files get wrapped up into the
.XAP file similar to how files with
Build Action of "Resource” get
embedded into the .Dll assembly (ex:
loading an image from content or
resource files). I found that instead
of using the Text="{Binding
Path=resourceFile.resourceName,
Source={StaticResource
Localizedresources }}" XAML syntax it
was easier to use the following steps:
Open your primary XAML page (usually MainPage.xaml) in the Visual
Studio designer
Open the properties for the PhoneApplicationPage and set the
DataContext to be
Application.Resources –>
LocalizedStrings. NOTE: if you already
are using a DataContext object, then
you should integrate the
LocalizedStrings class into that
object so that it has localization
support.
Once the Page’s DataContext has been set you can change the data
binding for any control on the page by
simply selecting the property (ex:
text, checked, etc), selecting “Apply
Data Binding…”, and setting the Path
to Localizedresources.BtnText or
whatever the name of the desired
resource value is.