Localizable Strings in Custom Controls

[rcopstein]

In my project I have a custom control that subclasses NSView and contains some customizable text fields. These text fields are bound to text properties that are @IBInspectable.

The same way that BartyCrouch generates localization strings for standard controls (such a a text field getting a ".title" key in the .strings file), how can I get the same behaviour on my own controls? It's not a static value that changes with language, I want an exposed parameter to "trigger" the generation of a key in the .strings file.

Does anyone know how to do this?

[Jeehut]

@rcopstein Are you talking about triggering the generation of a key in the .strings file of a XIB file? Or are you talking about the Localizable.strings file? If it's the latter, that's the transform option, see the README. If you're asking for the first, the only way currently to add a key to a .strings file is by adding it manually to the source languages you have specified in the BartyCrouch configuration (defaults to en if you didn't set one). Then, the key will be automatically added to all other languages.

There is no feature that will transform a key in code to a key in a XIB file, if that's what you're asking for. But I'm not sure if I understood you correctly. Feel free to provide more context, some code or even a small demo project.

[rcopstein]

@Jeehut Thank you for the answer. I should have given more details, my bad. I'm working on a macOS app using storyboards that are marked as localizable. Every time I add a component such as NSButton or NSTextField, BartyCrouch adds a key to the Storyboard.strings for that storyboard in all the supported languages. It's basically "ID of the control.Property" that gets added and bound to most NS controls.

What I am doing, instead of adding an NSButton, is adding a custom control, that is, something that inherits NSView. I was wondering if there is a way to make my custom control trigger the generation of a key when it is added to a storyboard, much like the NS controls do?

[Jeehut]

@rcopstein BartyCrouch actually doesn't parse any Interface Builder files, instead it uses the extractLocStrings command shipped as part of Xcode. So whatever that tool supports works currently for generating keys and it seems it doesn't support your use case.

Having that said, I am considering writing my own parser for the next major version of BartyCrouch where we can add features like this, but I can't promise anything there. I might be able to get it done in the next 12 months, but it's a big change and I'm not even sure if I will be happy with the performance or quality at all, we'll see.

You could move the translation part to code in the meantime and use the supported features there.

[rcopstein]

Got it! Yeah, I've been making do with NSLocalizedString in the meantime. It's not a bad workflow (especially when compared to the one without BartyCrouch), but just wondering if it did get better by providing what I mentioned.

Looking forward to seeing where you are going next! 😉