Here's a l10n thought I had the other day, and I'm sorry if it gets too technical:
Why is it so hard to add a supported file format to translation tools? A lot of formats, including the current Microsoft Office formats (PPTX, XLSX and DOCX) and IDML, the current export format for InDesign, are simply ZIP files renamed. What's inside of those ZIP files? XML files. That's right: plain text.
It's relatively easy to set up a filter for any sort of plain text file, be it XML, HTML, TXT or whatever, as long as you know a few things: Where is the translatable text? Are there patterns to find the translatable text? What do I do with the non-translatable text? (For example, is it interior formatting information, etc.) What's the encoding?
Most translation tools have filters set up for HTML already, and for TXT as long as everything's translatable. Most will even have some sort of customizable XML filter. It wouldn't be that hard to set up an interface that would let you define a compressed (ZIP) file extension, define which folders and/or files the translatable text would be found in, and define where in those XML files the translatable text is. So why has nobody done this? Sure, there are filters for the MS Office files, but most tools that I'm familiar with, if they support InDesign at all, are stuck back at only supporting INX files, which are the previous export file type, and they're XML to begin with!
What I want is a generic "compressed file" filter that will allow you to find the content. Java JAR files with translatable content are compressed files that (if they're done right) contain PROPERTIES files, which are a type of plain text. The above mentioned file formats are all compressed files that contain XML files. Who knows what files in the future will simply be compressed files that contain plain text information? If there were a generic way in some tool to define where and what is translatable, it would make our lives easier.
While we're at it, we need a better plain text filter. Some image formats contain translatable text information, but as far as I know there are no tools that support those file types.
Maybe I'll work on this stuff eventually, at least in pseudo code. Maybe someone in the right place will come to the same conclusion and make this widely available. Maybe.
Ok, I'm done ranting now.
