Some questions before buying

[wvd_vegt]

Hi,

Installed and tried TsiLang yesterday for D7.1EE and have some questions, requests and remarks before considering buying it:

Questions/Requests/Remarks:

1) Is it possible to exclude certain (global) function calls (like OutputDebugString) from translations? My apps are always emitting debug messages that are only usefull to me and may remain untranslated. They however cloud the translation tables. I saw the {TSI: directives but due to the amount of them I would prefer a list of functions to be excluded.

2) Related to 1) i would like to be able to exclude certain strings from translation too (like '.ini').

3) The translation grids cannot be sorted properly because they are sorted alphabetical. So IDS_10 comes after IDS_1 and before IDS_2. Is there a way to always have for instance a 3 digit number?

4) When i open the translation expert all forms open and the translation manager is not on top of them so i have to use alt-0 to find the window. When i close the window all forms stay open.

5) There is no Babelfish available inside the translation tabels on each form.

6) Is there a way to shorten the string replacement code. I would like to see something like GNUText that has a short '_()' called function (or '_T()'). It could be inserted in the implementation section and link to the currentforms's TsiLang component.

7) There is no way to mark a particulair string occurance as untranslatable so it does not show up again in the next source scan. Deleting them every time is a time consuming way.

Is there a way to test if the comments that are inserted for source strings still match the native language? Perhaps it's an idea to pass it into the replacement function and report an error if something has changed.

9) The final translation problem i have is a TEdit descendant component that links to two Tlabels that serve as attached prompt and units. I need the TEdit descendant to be translated and not the TLabels. Any suggestions for this? I noticed that {TSI:IGNORE ON|OFF} fails in the TForm1 defintion in the interface section.

[isiticov]

1) Is it possible to exclude certain (global) function calls (like OutputDebugString) from translations? My apps are always emitting debug messages that are only usefull to me and may remain untranslated. They however cloud the translation tables. I saw the {TSI: directives but due to the amount of them I would prefer a list of functions to be excluded.

This is not possible with current version. We will add such feature in next release.

2) Related to 1) i would like to be able to exclude certain strings from translation too (like '.ini').

This is quite related to 1) and we will also add this to nect version.

3) The translation grids cannot be sorted properly because they are sorted alphabetical. So IDS_10 comes after IDS_1 and before IDS_2. Is there a way to always have for instance a 3 digit number?

The TsiLang Expert has an option that allows you to change the auto-generated prefix for hard-coded strings. So you can just make it empty and you will have only digital IDs.

4) When i open the translation expert all forms open and the translation manager is not on top of them so i have to use alt-0 to find the window. When i close the window all forms stay open.

The TsiLang Expert has an option Open all forms at start-up just deactivate it and this will prevent openning all project's forms at start-up. Also just to note: on starting TsiLang Expert opens all already openned forms, some forms are open but not visible in IDE since Delphi opens them in "hidden" way but it is impossible to determine that they are hidden by IDE.

5) There is no Babelfish available inside the translation tabels on each form.

Babelfish feature available only in Dictionary Manager.

6) Is there a way to shorten the string replacement code. I would like to see something like GNUText that has a short '_()' called function (or '_T()'). It could be inserted in the implementation section and link to the currentforms's TsiLang component.

You may make shorter replacement code by controlling the comments length. Others couldn't be shorter.

7) There is no way to mark a particulair string occurance as untranslatable so it does not show up again in the next source scan. Deleting them every time is a time consuming way.

This is already in our to-do list and it looks quite similar to 2). So this will be available in next version

Is there a way to test if the comments that are inserted for source strings still match the native language? Perhaps it's an idea to pass it into the replacement function and report an error if something has changed.

No, unfortunately, there is no way for this. But we will try to see what could be done here.

9) The final translation problem i have is a TEdit descendant component that links to two Tlabels that serve as attached prompt and units. I need the TEdit descendant to be translated and not the TLabels. Any suggestions for this? I noticed that {TSI:IGNORE ON|OFF} fails in the TForm1 defintion in the interface section.

Just add these labels to DoNotTranslate property and they won't be translated.

[wvd_vegt]

Hi,

Thanks for the quick response (always good to see support in action). Any indication of when the next release will be?

About the ID numbering & sorting, you seem to sort them alfabetical which is fine but you need to alter the ID strings for it to work with numbers.

Sample of what it's like now:

IDS_1
IDS_10
IDS_11
IDS_2
IDS_200
IDS_3

When you want to sort numbers alphabetical you need leading Zero's like:

IDS_001
IDS_002
IDS_003
IDS_010
IDS_011
IDS_200

And about Babelfish & TsiLang, the reason I ask was because it's diffucult to add untranslated strings to the dictionary from inside the TsiLang component. As far as I could manage I needed a translation before a row could be added to the Dictionary.

[isiticov]

Thanks for the quick response (always good to see support in action). Any indication of when the next release will be?

Pretty soon. We're finalizing it now. But please take an attention to new notice at http://www.sicomponents.com

About the ID numbering & sorting, you seem to sort them alfabetical which is fine but you need to alter the ID strings for it to work with numbers.

Yes, I see now. May be there will be possible to improve something as well.

And about Babelfish & TsiLang, the reason I ask was because it's diffucult to add untranslated strings to the dictionary from inside the TsiLang component. As far as I could manage I needed a translation before a row could be added to the Dictionary.

Just select Add All to Dictionary and you will be able to add all cells and rows even empty.