CHROME-I18N

Introduction

Chrome-i18n is a tool (a builder) for your apps/extensions' locales. Chrome-i18n lets you easily build a complete database of locales starting from some project files.

For example, to build a database from a unique file (the monolith mode), you run:

chrome-i18n

This will load by default the file named dictionary.json into the current directory, and build the classic _locales directory with all the locales defined inside the dictionary file.

Installing Chrome-i18n

Chrome-i18n is installed using Node and npm.

npm install chrome-i18n -g

According to your configuration, you probably should type the command as root to install it globally.

Usage

To show the help, just type chrome-i18n --help.

To build a project:

chrome-i18n
chrome-i18n --file dict.json
chrome-i18n --file meta.json

As you can see, the only useful parameter you can use is --file. When omitted, this parameter will be set by default to ./dictionary.json.

The only supported file format is JSON. Files not conforming to this format will be ignored.

Defining a project

Currently are supported three different formats to define a project:

• monolith: in this mode the project file is a unique JSON file in which are defined both the meta descriptor and the whole database. See the file doc/monolith.md for further informations about the monolith mode.
• category: in this mode the project is divided into a meta descriptor file which will describe the project's structure, and one or more definition files. See the file doc/category.md for further informations about the category mode.
• language: in this mode the project is divided into a meta descriptor file which will describe the project's structure and the database definitions, and as many files as the supported languages which will define only the translations. See the file doc/language.md for further informations about the language mode.

Philosophy

Currently, people manually manage locales project sources. Every language with its own directory and definition file, all pretty the similiar but the translated message. It's a lot of useless redundancy to manage by hand. This sucks and the goal is to make it much easier.

Chrome-i18n is a specific tool which will build a complete database for your Chrome extensions and web apps starting from some project files, easier to maintain and manage.

Contributing

In lieu of a formal styleguide, take care to maintain the existing coding style. Add unit tests for any new or changed functionality. Lint and test your code using grunt.

Release History

See the CHANGELOG.md file distributed with the project.

License

Copyright (c) 2012-2013 Marco Trulla - Licensed under the MIT license.

See the LICENSE-MIT file distributed with the project.