Localization - How to

This is a walk-through for localizers on how to translate Adium with iLocalize and XCode's Interface Builder.

What do you need

You need an Adium application package that you can localize.

• Get a Beta version of Adium, if there is one available at the moment
  • You can check and download it from the beta page

• If no Beta version is available, you can choose between
  1. The latest development version of Adium, if you know how to use Mercurial and XCode
     • You can download it by following the instructions on the Newest Adium Source page
  2. The latest Debug version of Adium
     • You can download it from the Adium Debug page

What do you have to do

1. Start iLocalize and setup the Adium project

• If you don't have an iLocalize project for Adium
  1. Create a New Project from the File menu
     • Choose the Adium application package that you've got as the 'Bundle to Localize'. Ignore warnings about nib files outside of .lproj folders.
• If you already have an iLocalize project for Adium
  1. Open the project
  2. Select "Update from Bundle" from the Project menu
     • Select "Update the project from a new version of the bundle" and click Choose to select the Adium application package.

• If you are updating an existing localization (made by you or by a previous mantainer)
  1. Check the .nib changes list
  2. For each of these files, select it and then choose "Rebuild Selected Files from 'en'" from the contextual menu

2. Check what files need to be translated
   • Click on each item shown in the rightmost list and check the translations. There are filters on the left side which can help you see what strings have been changed since the last version or have not yet been translated.

3. Translate the strings (.strings files)

4. Translate the user interface elements (.nib files) via Interface Builder
   1. Double-click the .nib file you want to translate and it will be opened in Interface Builder
      • A list will be shown in the document window, of which the View and Window items are the interface elements to translate.
   2. For each View and Window element listed in the document window, double-click it and translate its interface
      • If you need to change the text of an item, double-click it.
        If you need to resize an item, click it and use the resize indicators.
        If you need to move an item, click it and drag it (remember to never use cut-and-paste to move interface controls).
        
      • Some views have multiple sections which can't be immediately seen. To translate such sections:
        1. Click on "Show Inspector" from the Tools menu
        2. Select the "Attributes" tab from the Inspector
        3. Click in the blank area under where the tabs (or an area you know has hidden tabs) are shown. This selects the NSTabView which contains the tabs.
        4. The Inspector window reads "Displaying Tab Item: 1"
        5. Click on the arrow in the Inspector window to change tabs to "2"

5. Send the localization
   • Select "Export Localization" from the Project menu
     • Select "Only localized resources", then choose your language from the list, check "Compress" and select "Export".
   • Create a Trac ticket and attach the localization .zip file to it
     • Title the ticket as "Adium (version) (language) localization" (e.g. "Adium 1.4b1 Italian localization"), choose "Localization" as the component and "Patch" as the type of the ticket