localization kit release notes

version 4.05

These are the current release notes for the localization kit for Communicator and Navigator for 32 bit Windows. Please ignore any localization kit release notes that might have been previously installed on your system.


These release notes include:


What's New in this Kit

This kit is the first update to the publicly available localization kits being distributed under Netscape's universal localization program. The first kit was based on Communicator version 4.03; this kit is based on version 4.05. For information on the changes and improvements made to Communicator and Navigator 4.05, please read the product release notes here:

(http://home.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/4.0/relnotes/windows-4.0.html)

From the standpoint of localization, there are no major new components to translate, although a fair number of strings and other User Interface elements have changed since 4.03. (Our internal word counts showed some 800 words changed between 4.03 and 4.04, and some 3,000 words changed between 4.04 and 4.05). If you are localizing Communicator for the first time, these changes will be of no consequence to you. If, however, you have previously localized version 4.03 and wish to preserve your earlier work, please read the next two sections carefully.


Known Issues

As noted above, a large number of user visible strings changed between versions 4.04 and 4.05. These changes are largely due to the reorganizing of the so-called "Security Advisor" dialogs. These dialogs are cross-platform string resources derived from HTML pages; they are visible when the user chooses Communicator | Security Info from the main menus, or presses any of the Security icons or buttons in the product. They range in resource ID from STRINGTABLE30000 to STRINGTABLE32597. The reorganization of these resources included changing some of the original text, adding new strings, deleting old strings and changing the resource IDs of existing strings. In some cases, both the text and the ID changed simultaneously. These changes will make leveraging (automatically re-using) earlier translation work difficult. These changes were made for the following reasons: If you plan on leveraging a previous translation into 4.05, using DogLev or another resource leveraging tool that depends on matching resource IDs, you will need to deal with these changes. The section below discusses the approach we used at Netscape to address this issue.

Leveraging from Previous Versions

"Leveraging" is the term we use to describe the process of reusing translations from one version to the next. This avoids the cost and effort of retranslating items for which we already have usable translations.

DogLev is the Netscape Leveraging tool for Windows resources. It is provided as part of this localization kit to help you preserve your translation investment. You are not required to use this tool, but if you choose to use it, please consult the Netscape Translation Tools Users Guide for more information DogLev and ToolCool (the resource editing component of the translation tool set).

Leveraging the 4.03 or 4.04 Security Advisor Strings

As mentioned above, you will need to deal with the changed resources in the Security Advisor strings.

Following this section, there is a link to a .ZIP file containing several files, including a Windows resource script (.rc) file. This file contains the new STRINGTABLE resources from 4.05. Strings which have changed from 4.04 are identified using standard C comments:
// Previously n
where n is equal to the resource's ID value in version 4.04.

Also included in this .ZIP file is a perl script, a modified version of the 4.04 resdll.dll file and a couple of supporting files. You can use these to create a leveragable version of your localized 4.04 or 4.03 product in the following way:

  1. Download the attached .ZIP file and unzip the contents.
  2. Make sure that allxpstr_win32.txt is in the current directory.
  3. In Developer Studio or similar resource editor, create a new resource script file, and copy all of the string tables from your localized resdll.dll into the empty resource script.
  4. Save the new resource script (we'll assume you call it old_strs.rc).
  5. Run the Perl script, pulling your old strings from standard input, and redirecting the output into a new resource script file (we'll use "new_strs.rc"):

    If all goes well, your new string file should open up as a resource script in Developer Studio. Fix any errors found by the compiler (in our tests, we had no such problems, although the script could potentially generate an empty STRINGTABLE, which Developer Studio doesn't like).

  6. Make a copy of your localized 4.04 resdll.dll, and delete the entire string table from the copy.
  7. Copy the "shifted" strings from your new_strs.rc file into the copy of your localized DLL, and save the changes.

The new "shifted" localized DLL can now be used to leverage with the old "shifted" US file, and will result in better results when leveraged against 4.05. A copy of the shifted 4.04 US resdll.dll is contained in the .ZIP file.

The above steps will also work with 4.03, however, you may need to adjust a small number of strings after processing. These will most likely be identified as ID ONLY matches in ToolCool's REASON field.

NOTE: You may want to adjust the .rc file's language settings to account for your language's requirements.

If you try to leverage without addressing the changed resource IDs first, you will have the cross platform Security Advisor strings scattered through the product at random IDs. This will cause the program to malfunction or even crash.

The alternative to the steps above is to releverage from 4.04, but first remove the cross platform (XP) strings from the string table. This will treat all the XP strings as new (NO MATCH) and they will be in English. You can then retranslate them.

Hint: if you used the .dbf files to keep your translations up to date you can use ToolCool to "Import from Glossary". This might save you some work. Here's how to do this:

  1. Open your resdll.dbf in ToolCool.
  2. Choose Export | Text and save as resdll.txt.
  3. Do the leveraging described above.
  4. Open the newXL resdll.dbf
  5. Choose "Import from Glossary" and select resdll.txt you created in step 2.
  6. This will look up translations from the resdll.txt and try to match them to resdll.dbf.
  7. When that is done, choose Save and update RESDLL.DLL.

(This may not be perfect but it might save you some retranslation work).

Download the Security Advisor ZIP file here.

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