KnitWeb

Why Localization important

Localization is the process of adapting, translating and customizing a product for a specific locale or cultural conventions. Localization distinguishes a good web front end from a truly successful one. Today English is a priority language to be learning to use computers. Having Localization we can gain benefits such as, no need to local users to learn English first, Reduce amount of training and localization brings additional value.  To improve localization community of volunteers needs to get together and first establish a guiding set of terms to guarantee accurate and consistent translation. Community is the strongest part for an Open Source project. Translation process can be improved by making sure that efforts in translations are consistent and structured. So the lots of local users can enjoy KnitWeb and hopefully become a part of the community.

How Localization work on KnitWeb

KnitWeb construct elements of the interface using JavaScript dynamically. Retrieve the correct localized string in JavaScript is the most important part for localize an app like KnitWeb. For the Localization I used 3 types of files i.e. languge.properties, locles.ini and l10.js.

.properties files (en.properties, ge.properties): These files contain the translations of strings used in the KnitWeb. Each line is the translation of a single string in “name=value” format; name is an identifier for this string, It is used to map the string; value is the translation of the string in particular language.

Inside ge.properties

#Inputs
input_port=Port
input_machine=Maschine:

Inside si.properties

#Inputs
input_port=කවුළුව
input_machine=යන්ත්‍රය:

locales.ini : locales.ini includes which is the default language in case app does not support current language, what type of other locales KnitWeb supports and the location of the each translated file.

l10n.js: JavaScript library. Automatic localization of strings appearing in your app’s HTML. Provides a JavaScript API your app can use to retrieve localized strings( get, getLanguage, setLanguage, getDirection)