On Sun, 15 Mar 2020 11:47:42 +0000 (UTC) D Blakeley <d_blake...@yahoo.com> wrote: > I've gotta say with all due respect it seems strange that the whole map usage > system requires manual entry into some translation list instead of storing > the required extra info in the map files themselves and simply having a map > reader that pulls the info out of the map files. As then all this special > work and list management isn't required when regular users want to add maps > to the game.
You could think that... but you would be wrong:-). FreeColMessages.properties is the master file containing all the strings that will be displayed to the player[1]. Or more precisely, the player in English(US) locales. Look around the strings directory, it is full of similar files with locale suffixes for numerous different languages and dialects. Heck there is even English(GB). This does not happen by magic, but thanks to the volunteers at translatewiki who take the master strings file and make localized versions of it with the same keys but translated values, which they then commit back to our sf repo (although this is equivalent to magic in terms of the effort required from the FreeCol project). This means that if I like, I can play FreeCol in Finnish or Catalan or ... which is really cool. There is a cost to this of course. Throughout FreeCol we have to be careful to display only strings that have been looked up in the correct strings file. There is some pretty clever code that does this, written by smart people that understand i18n/l10n (i.e. not me). But as long as we keep every displayed string in one place for the translators (who know *nothing* about the structure of FreeCol), they can easily do their magic and we get a better game. So now Blake, you want to put a displayable string in some other random file? I hope you can now appreciate that... that is a big ask. > so that's presumably a few different new programmers wanting to help you > which is really good (maybe the new welcome thread attracted their help & > sent them in the right direction, or a least that's what I'm going to tell > myself haha). We will never know for sure, but I hope you are right. Cheers, Mike Pope [1] Except... we have a problem with mods. Fixing this is on the list but after new-release.
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