Sometimes a new version starts with an email. This one came from Catalonia. Raul, EA3JIC, had discovered MacADIF and found it a good replacement for ADIF Master on the Mac. He would like to use the app in Spanish and Catalan and offered to translate it as a volunteer. Were there language files, he asked, or else a list of the texts would do. I could choose the format.
Why not, I thought. The catch: there were no language files. MacADIF was German only, with the texts sitting directly in the code.
Laying the groundwork first
So the foundation came first. On the evening of 16 October MacADIF got a string catalogue, and every text in the app became translatable, including the check messages and reports in the shared ADIFCore package that HAM-Tools uses as well. So that Raul would not have to fiddle with Xcode, a small script exports the texts as a CSV file and reads them back in.
On import, the script checks the placeholders. Where the original says, for example, %@ (%lld), a text and a number, the translation must carry exactly these values in the right place. Otherwise the app shows the wrong numbers or, at worst, crashes. My first version of that check was too lenient. The code review caught it before the first CSV file had gone out.
On 17 October English arrived as the first foreign language, version 0.16.0. In the evening Raul’s translation came back, for both languages and around 460 texts in the app alone. He set the placeholders with positional numbers, exactly the way the check wants them. I changed only one small detail: «cuadrículas locator del locator» became «cuadrículas locator». Version 0.16.1 went out the same evening, Spanish and Catalan including check messages, contest and cross-check reports. Raul is credited as translator in the changelog and in the online help.
One translation leads to the next idea
Until then MacADIF followed the macOS language. Anyone wanting the app in Catalan would have had to switch the whole Mac. That seemed too much to ask. Since 0.17.0, half an hour later, you choose the language at the bottom of the sidebar: system language, Deutsch, English, Español or Català. It applies after a restart, which MacADIF offers right away, asking first if there are unsaved changes.
Raul gave me one more thing to take away: «1 errors» gets the plural wrong. He is right. Proper singular and plural forms are on my list for a future version.
For everyone who doesn’t know MacADIF yet
MacADIF is my tool for post-processing ADIF logs, native on the Mac. It checks logs against the ADIF specification, finds duplicates, compares two logs, shows statistics, checks outdoor logs for POTA, SOTA, WWFF, BOTA, LLOTA, WCA and GMA before submission and exports contest logs as Cabrillo or EDI. Since October it can also cross-check several contest logs against each other. It is not a live logger; that is what HAM-Tools is for. More in the introduction post (in German).
The app is free and still in beta, needs macOS 14 or later and announces updates by itself. Download and guide are at macadif.funkwelt.net/help. For now the help pages are in German only.
Thank you, Raul. Within two days, one friendly email turned into two new languages and a language picker. If you would like MacADIF in your own language: the CSV file is quickly sent.
73 de Chris, HB9HJI
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