Resources (resx) maintenance in big projects

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+3 Q:

Resources (resx) maintenance in big projects

In a big project where you have lots of resources (resx) what would be the right approaches and/or tools of translation in order to save time, at the same time keep everything in order and leave nothing behind.

More precisely, how to find (as far as translations are concerned) what has been modified (adds and removes are easy) of an entire .NET application from a previous version to another? Would resx technology help you there? How?

Anton Gogolev 2009-04-30 10:40:07

Two things:1. Don't you let Visual Stuido automatically create resx file for you? (For instance, it would be an aweful experience if you had to manually add resx rows for WinForms)2. How do you keep track of what has been modified from a release to another? You can't possibly do this by hand, there must be some tool which will help you...Thanks.

exalted 2009-04-30 11:02:19

+1 A:

I wrote some about it in this answer:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/805922/are-resx-files-suitable-for-internationalization/805938#805938

Summary:

You should use a localization tool. It notices if a original text changes and if new texts are added, so you always know what you need to translate.

Note: a localization tool only manages translations, not the original language.

Stefan Steinegger 2009-04-30 10:59:26

Correct me if I'm wrong: basically resx only (or within Visual Studio) you will not be able to handle this kind of thing... What you need is a so called "localization tool" which will --somehow-- keep track of edits made on that resx and eventually will let translator know that a particular translation has been modified since last touch?

exalted 2009-04-30 12:52:28

@exalted: yes, exactly. The localization tool knows the original texts that were translated and therefore recognizes if they changed (since translation). In most of the tools you can also manually set them to "reviewed". You can either translate texts using the tool itself, or by exporting the texts to be translated in csv or some other format, translate in an external tool, and import again.

Stefan Steinegger 2009-04-30 13:34:49

Do you know any free (as in beer) software for this?

exalted 2009-04-30 19:29:30

@exalted: No, I don't know any free localization tools for .NET. The tools I know are quite expensive.

Stefan Steinegger 2009-05-01 10:24:36

Thanks a lot Stefan.

exalted 2009-05-01 18:33:34

I recently released a very reasonably priced product for handling ".resx" translations. It's a Visual Studio add-in that extracts all strings from any .NET solution and loads them into a single file that your translator can localize using a free app available on my site. They can even view your (translated) Windows forms in context. The same add-in then imports the translated strings back into your solution. Very easy to use. See my site at http://www.hexadigm.com for details.

Larry 2010-08-28 21:51:20

Can this tool keep history of previous translations or highlight what's been added/modified since last version?

exalted 2010-08-29 14:24:48

Sorry for not responding sooner as I wasn't tracking this post. There's not really enough space here to adequately address your issues. The one missing feature is that it doesn't identify changes to strings that have already been translated. For this you simply have to clear the existing translations before running the tool. Support for this feature is already the top priority for the next release however. Nevertheless, I think most programmers will already find the app much easier than any other I've seen so far. Try the demo even if you don't plan on purchasing it (to see what I mean).

Larry 2010-09-21 04:04:06

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Resources (resx) maintenance in big projects

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