Developer Center

Adding multilingual text

jAlbum has a mechanism to simplifiy writing skins that support texts in several languages (usually navigation strings like "Next" and "Previous" etc). Look at this example:

$text.previousPage

Given the example above, jAlbum will look for a mapping for the "previousPage" "key" in the current language of the user running jAlbum. jAlbum will look into certain property files. The format of such a file is simply a list of key=value mappings, one for each row. Here is a sample Swedish property file (texts_sv.properties):

up=Upp en nivå
previousPage=Föregående sida
nextPage=Nästa sida
firstPage=Första sidan
lastPage=Sista sidan
atFirstPage=Det här är första sidan
atLastPage=Det här är sista sidan
indexPage=Till index sidan
originalImage=Originalbild
cameraInfo=Kamerainformation

To support a new language, say German, simply copy and paste such a file, rename it to texts_de.properties and translate the text strings inside. Finally save it as a UTF-8 encoded text file under a "texts" folder. Note: You can force the use of a certain language by setting a "language" variable to an ISO two character code that the current skin has support for.