Is your favorite application possible to translate? If the developers used the GNU gettext library, yes, with poEdit or similar editor. Wordpress is an example.
To translate you do not have to be able to code, but of course you have to know the language well. So dont be afraid to try! :)
Step 1, the POT
This is a step which should already have been taken care of by the developer. poEdit scans the files in a catalog for translatable strings to create a file named .pot (Portable Object Template). If there is a .pot-file, use it to create a .po for your language.
Step 2, the PO
The .po-file (Portable Object) is the one you will work with, it contains the strings and values for the translation. The naming of files can be different between projects. For example, a common way to make a swedish translation: choose to open the POT and generate a .po-file, save as sv_SE.po for the swedish language.
Step 3, the MO
When you translate the strings you have the original text to the left, and the translation to the right. Mark the word you want to translate and fill in the form at the bottom. Each time the file is saved, a .mo (Machine Object) file is generated. It is this file the webbapplication will use.
The reason I write this post is to make people understand that to translate applications using this technique, you don’t have to know how to code. Does your favorite application miss translation for your language? If it supports gettext, all you need is poEdit and the .po(t)-file. What are you waiting for? ;)
Some more reading on this subject:
Tags: gnu, language, multilingual, translating
Posted February 18th, 2010 by Mattias Wirf in Editors, poEdit
2 Comments »
I have made the first submit to Wordpress plugin database with my Random Post Box plugin. It’s nice to see that they are using Subversion, my favorite versioning-system :)
If you want to see an example of the plugin in use, check out below the first post on Retrocamera.net.
Tags: retrocamera, subversion, svn, woordpress-plugin
Posted February 13th, 2010 by Mattias Wirf in Plugin
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Download Random Post Box from Wordpress.org
See the plugin in use on Retrocamera.net (the little box below the first post).
Random Post Box is a Wordpress plugin. It will let you place a box (div) anywhere on your blog, with templatetag or shortcode, and load random posts with an interval and fade effect. It uses jQuery (Ajax) which means that the content is loaded without loading the rest of the page. The timing can be controlled in the Admin Options-panel.
The template tag is <?php random_post_box(); ?>. You can also use the shortcode [random-post-box] in a page or post.
Features
- Insert placeholder with template tag
- Insert placeholder with shortcode
- Set time for displaying the post
- Set times for fade in and fade out affect
- Exclude or include posts by category
- Exclude posts by age (in days)
- Use title only
- Use post excerpt or bodycontent
- Strip tags from body
- Show/hide post metadata
- Prepared for translation
Continue reading »
Tags: ajax, extension, jquery, random-post-box, wp
Posted February 9th, 2010 by Mattias Wirf in Plugin, Wordpress
5 Comments »
I have a confession about editors to make. I hate(!) auto-completion.
In theory it sounds great with suggestions and auto-features. In real life it’s an obstacle to overcome.
The plan is, I guess, to make me faster. But instead it slows me down. If I know what I’m going to write in a script I don’t get faster with popups and shit.
Can I tweak the auto-completion in most editors? Yes of course, but almost never enough. So I just either get more and more annoyed during the day, or I turn it off. The editor that gives me the complete control over this features gets my love.
Tags: auto-completion, settings
Posted February 3rd, 2010 by Mattias Wirf in Confessions, Editors
No Comments »
I’m really starting to like it, but got stuck on how to make Netbeans use tabs for indention. Deselecting the option “Extend tabs to spaces” didn’t work for me, I still got those damn spaces (I hate indention by spaces).
I found the solution though, go to your “Options“-panel, choose the “Editor” page, select “Formatting” and set “Tab size” and “Number of spaces to indent” to the same size.
Update: More PHP’ers falling for Netbeans.
Tags: indention, spaces, tabs
Posted February 1st, 2010 by Mattias Wirf in Editors, Netbeans
2 Comments »
If you look in my second column I have started to make some lists to help you find your texteditor. There is lists for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows. If you think some editor is missing, please feel free to make suggestions. My plans are to review all of them, but that of course will take some time to finish ;)
Tags: editorlists, Platform
Posted January 30th, 2010 by Mattias Wirf in News and blog
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Now you can get Freemind 0.9 on Xubuntu Linux (and OS X and Windows). Freemind is the free mindmapping software. I think it is great for planning and thinking sometimes. There is an old version in the Ubuntu repositories, but I had a hard time getting it to work and it couldn’t open the maps I made on my Mac or Windows (since they had later versions of the software).
I just downloaded freemind-bin-max-0.9.0_RC_6.zip and extracted, made freemind.sh executable and now I got a new version of this great little program :)
Tags: freemind, mindmapping, xubuntu
Posted January 28th, 2010 by Mattias Wirf in Linux, Other software
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The image you see below is the editor Quanta Plus on Mac OS X. It is a port of KDE WebDev and is usually run on Linux. Since I’ve been working with it for a while I tought it would be nice to get it going on Apples Mac OS X too.
Macports
I began by installing MacPorts (an “an easy-to-use system for compiling, installing, and upgrading either command-line, X11 or Aqua based open-source software on the Mac OS X operating system”).
Continue reading »
Tags: kde, macports, OSX, quanta
Posted January 24th, 2010 by Mattias Wirf in OSX, Quanta
No Comments »
I work a lot on an old Notebook, and today it got laptop hickups. Actually it all started years ago when the harddrive (IBM “deathstar” Deskstar) started giving “Non system disk” error. About a month ago I replaced it. Great. Happy days.
This morning when I arrived to work (2 hours late, due to error in the local traffic) I think it stopped working while I was writing to the disk, resulting in an filsystem error. I managed to fix is with the fsck from terminal, but it took a couple of hours more. Half a day gone and nothing done… but at least the laptop works again.
Tags: computers, life, trouble
Posted January 22nd, 2010 by Mattias Wirf in Hardware
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