Im using localization in my Android app. I change the localization inside the app, so it doesn't change the system settings. I create dirs with the name "values-nl" and "values-en". This works fine. Buts lets say I want to create my own language. When I do this and create my own folder like "values-test" is trows me an error.
this is how i set the localization inside the app:
Locale locale = new Locale("nl");
Locale.setDefault(locale);
Buts lets say I want to create my own language.
This is not possible, except via custom firmware. -test is not going to be a recognized resource set. You are welcome to support any of the languages that your desired version of Android supports -- you can find the list of these in the Locales section of the SDK release notes, such as these for Android 4.0.3.
Reputedly, you can use Locale to change what resource set will be used on the fly, though I have not tried this myself.
Related
When you want to add locale-specific resources in Android, you have to add the lowercase ISO-3166-1 code of the language to the resource folder's name. So far so good.
Now I want to add Catalan and Basque strings to my application. According to the ISO list, I would have to add values-ca and values-eu. But will that work, actually?
Edit: With a custom language chooser in your app, you can provide support for languages even when they're not in the device's settings menu. I've made the library that I use for this available on GitHub:
https://github.com/delight-im/Android-Languages
I don't know if Android supports all ISO codes and if these "minor" languages will be displayed at all. If Android is not available in these languages, perhaps the device will not even recognize this language as its default locale and just use es for Spanish.
Can someone help?
Many devices ship with a limited selection of languages in the settings menu, but can actually be set to any system locale using an app such as LocaleSwitch.
It should be pretty easy to test whether Basque is supported by adding a custom locale in LocaleSwitch and then adding the resource folder to see if the system loads the resources from this folder automatically.
Finally, Gingerbread 'support' for Catalan may only reference the inclusion of android.R values since 2.3, though I can't see them in the framework repository.
Actually not all languages are documented at Android docs and many brands did your custom version of Android which may change its list, but be sure that if a device has Catalan and/or Basque suports it will use ISO standard, and the values will got rigth as it is converted with string comparision.
Maybe it would be a good choice to put a handed changer if you got that most devices do not have this support on your tests.
The thing is, if the language is not listed in the language selection list on the device, the resources can never be used as the device can never be put in this configuration by the user.
On the other hand, if the device allows you to select Basque, it will be using this format, and your resources will be used.
We can now create our "values-eu-rES" folder and have our app in Basque, Android Lollipop has made it.
We can create a folder
Basque strings ->
value-eu [Basque]
another folder
Catalan strings ->
value-ca [Catalan]
Adding a new language in LocaleSwitch, you need to type the ISO 639-1 code. For instance, if you want to switch to basque you need to enter "eu". Afterwards, you will see the new locale as "vasco".
That makes me think that basque locale is supported by android.
If I added Slovak (SK) language (values-sk-rSK and values-sk) to the Android Wear 1.5 apks (framework-res.apk also), language wasn't set to SK automatically even I had SK on the phone.. so for change language on the Wear watches is needed to translate also Wear app on the phone to SK lang..? Or why my translation wasn't loaded on the watches..?
I have a lot of experiences with adding translation into the Android ROM for phones, but seems it works differently on Android Wear...
Thank you for any help...
As stated in this Localization Tips: Design your application to work in any locale documentation, if your application is missing even one default resource, it will not run on a device that is set to an unsupported locale.
For example, the res/values/strings.xml default file might lack one string that the application needs: When the application runs in an unsupported locale and attempts to load res/values/strings.xml, the user will see an error message and a Force Close button.
You may also check this link which explains challenges in resolving Language resources. Be noted that when your Java code refers to strings, the system would load strings from the default (en_US) resource file, even if the app has Spanish resources localized under es_ES. This is because when the system cannot find an exact match, it continues to look for resources by stripping the country code off the locale. Finally, if no match is found, the system falls back to the default, which is en_US.
Here's a related SO thread which might help.
My company ships Android devices to control industrial equipment we make. We only ship one specific device running Android 2.36 that we buy in quantity and load our own app on, so we don't have to worry about accommodating different layouts, resolutions, etc.
We have a customer in Israel who would like us to have the legends on our buttons in Hebrew. Android 2.36 doesn't have good support for Hebrew (or RTL languages in general) so what we thought we would do is replace the text for these buttons with an image of the Hebrew text.
Since Hebrew is not a supported language on these devices I can't just put the whole device in Hebrew and have Android select the layout XML files with the images instead of text to use at runtime, so I think I might have to do it at build time, in other words have some kind of switch or setting that says use THESE layout resources instead of THOSE layout resources when building a Hebrew version of our product.
My Question: What's a good way to do that? Is there a simple way to force it to use a particular set of layout XML files at build time or am I thinking about this wrong?
If you're using Gradle for Android with Android Studio, this would be a fine place to use product flavors:
Have the bulk of your code and resources be in the main sourceset as normal
Define standard and hebrew product flavors in your build.gradle file
Have the normal (non-Hebrew) resources be in a standard sourceset
Have the Hebrew resources be in a hebrew sourceset
Then, a hebrew build will use the Hebrew layouts, while a standard build would use the normal layouts.
If Gradle for Android is not an option, since you control the hardware, you could drop some file in some special spot on the device, and check that when your process starts to determine if you should be in Hebrew-compatibility mode or not. This presumes that the users of the Android device do not have arbitrary access to it (so external storage would be safe) or that you inject the file into internal storage after installing your app (adb shell run-as should handle this, though I have only ever used it for read operations, not write operations).
I was going to say you could use the layout-LANG to specify region based layouts, but I don't think you can do that if the language isn't supported there.
https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/localization.html
Does your app have a settings screen? You could simply have a setting to change all the layouts in run time.
Do you use Android Studio? Android studio allows different build profiles for debug, release, etc. You could set one up for Israel.
I have placed the resources to support different languages in appropriate packages as suggested in Android Localization documentation. Is there a way to add additional languages, i.e, resources after the app is installed without having to download and re-install the app. I mean updating the app - adding new resources and even updating some existing ones.
For example if my app initially supported English and French. Now suppose I want to add new language say Hindi and update few of the resources in English. So what is the approach..?
I had this issue, my approach is to create separate folder on the device \data\packageName\languages\
there will be one file called supportedfiles.lang the format of the file will be
English en
Russian ru
...
also in same location you will have the following files
en.lang
ru.lang
the format of each language file ie(en.lang / ru.lang) will be like regular strings.xml
Some text
when you load the application in settings screen you will read the supportedfiles.lang and show to user the supported languages when he choose different language you just need to load the appropriate language file
Maybe it is over kill, but you will have the flexibility to support other languages while the application installed without updating the application just copy the files into /data/package/languages/
I am making an app in which I want to implement internationalization.
I have created alternative resources like
res/values-fr/strings.xml
which Contains French text for all the strings, including title
Can anyone tell me what to do next...
thanks
You should always have default strings in res/values/strings.xml, because Android tries to use the most specific resource available. If you have for example res/values-fr/strings.xml and res/values-de/strings.xml and the users phone is set to English, your app will crash because neither de nor fr are applicable for English there are no fallback resources.
After you have specified your default strings and any translations in their respective subfolders, you can use the strings by their qualifiers. For example R.string.some_string. Android will then use the most appropriate translation that is available for the users current device language.
All that and more is explained here: Localizing with Resources
Device will load locale automatically based on system languge. No extra steps required unless you want to change locale in your app independently.