Localizing Office•Words Search and Replace
This topic contains information you may require to translate the program user interface to your language.
What & How: Quick start
- Run Office•Words. Select the Options tab.
- Click Create a new translation… to export all the strings to a .lng file.
- Save the file. The default name is _OfficeWords.lng but you have to change it to the name of the target language.
- By default, Office•Words suggests to save the file in the localizations folder. It is not recommended to change the folder; otherwise you'll be unable to view your results.
- Open the file for editing in any Unicode-aware text editor (even Notepad will do) and set the Language parameter in the Info section (see below).
- Translate strings. You can view your work in real time by first selecting the new language and then just refreshing the language list on the Options tab by clicking
.
General Prerequisites
Localization Files and Their Location
The localization files have the extension .lng and are stored in the "Localizations" subfolder of the program data folder. To access the localizations directly, copy the following address, paste it into the Windows Explorer address bar and open it:
%AppData%\Etimos\Office•Words\Localizations
Localization File Format
A .lng file is a Windows INI file saved as a Unicode file.
If you save your .lng file as an ANSI file, nearly all national characters will be a mess.
The [Info] Section
This section currently have two parameters.
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| Language | Specifies the language name as it will be visible in the Language List. |
| LangID | Denotes the IETF language tag. An ID consists of the ISO 639-1 language abbreviation and the two character country code. For example: en-US,
en-GB, ru-RU, fr-FR. If you don't know what it is or how to use it, leave this parameter empty. |
Other Sections
All the other sections contain text strings used by the application. These are the phrases that need to be translated.
Guidelines
Special Characters
Some characters cannot be typed directly because they are reserved or cannot be used unambiguously.
| Escape Sequence | Meaning |
|---|---|
| \r | Inserts a carriage return character. |
| \n | Inserts a new line character. |
| \t | Inserts a tab character. |
| \\ | Inserts a backward slash. |
| $5B | Inserts [ (left square bracket) |
| $5D | Inserts ] (right square bracket) |
| $3D | Inserts = (equals sign) |
| $24 | Inserts $ (dollar sign) |
Print Formatters
There may occur the so called "percent sequences" like %s, %d, %1. When the program uses a string containing such formatters, it will replace them with something meaningful. You can change the location of the percent sequences in a text string, but you must not delete them.
Important Places
Pay special attention to the strings:
- 114=Search Body,Bdy|...
- 115=Search Cells,Cel|...
- 116=Search Slide Shapes,Sld|...
If you accidentally delete a comma or a vertical bar, the program may behave not as expected. Bdy, Cel etc. are the abbreviations; make up something you find appropriate.