Babel Fish

Language-Resource Editor

Babel Fish is an editor to create and edit multilingual Java resource files. All languages and dialects supported by an application can be managed simultaneously.


System requirements

To execute the application you need an installed Java 1.4.x Runtime Environment (JRE). (http://www.java.com/).

Installation

To install Babel Fish just unpack the ZIP archive to a folder of your choice and doubleclick the file babelfish.jar to start the application.

To start Babel Fish from a shell, change to the application directory of Babel Fish and type the follwing command:
java -jar babelfish.jar

Editing Projekts

Creating a new project

Select the menu command File / New or use the menu command File / Add language right after starting Babel Fish. Afterwards you can select the desired language(s) from the language chooser dialog. Additional languages can be added to a project at any time.

Opening an existing project

Open the file chooser dialog with the File / Open menu command. Select the resource file to be opened. If there are resource files for multiple languages, select an arbitrary file of those. Babel Fish automatically searches for all language variants when opening a resource file and opens them as well.

For quick reopening of previously edited projects use the project list provided by the File / Recently opened menu entry.

Saving a project

To store a project select the File / Save command to save the project with its current name or select the File / Save as command to save a copy of the project with a new name.

In the file chooser dialog you can either specifiy the prefix of the resource file (e.g. Resources) or a full filename with an optional language identifier (e.g. Resources.properties or Resources_en.properties). Babel Fish automatically generates the required suffixes for each resource file variant.

Note: Avoid underscore characters in names until you want to separate a language identifier.

Editing texts

Babel Fish displays the keys for text entries of a resource file as a tree. A resource key usually consists of a number of alphanumeric characters and dots. Babel Fish treats each dot in the key's name as a separator and creates a new subsidiary node for it in the tree view on the left side of the application window.

On the right side of the window all currently supported language variants are shown. Each time yoou select a tree node its associated texts are displayed here and can be edited.

The tree nodes are represented by a folder symbol. If the text entries associated with a key are incomplete (translations have been provided only for some of the text entries) the folder symbol is marked with a red exclamation mark. In this case even all of the node's anchestors indicate the incomplete translation with a red dot on their folder symbol.

Inserting a new key

Select a parent tree node for the node to be inserted. Select the function New node and type in the new partial key name and commit with the Enter key.

To insert a multipart or complete key at once, type the name into the Key field at the upper side of the application window and commit with the Enter key of the Change to button. This field also displays the full qualified key name of the currently selected tree node.

Deleting a key

To delete an existing key select the tree node to delete and press Ctrl + Del or use the function Delete node.



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