Vim Menutrans Helper

Menu item translations in Vim are so difficult that many native speakers don't know how to participate. It's difficult because it uses Vim Script rather than other common translation formats, and therefore requires translators to be familiar with Vim Script. Even for those versed in Vim script, it's hard for them to find the menu items scattering across many different files. Tools in this repository could solve the above problems.

• vim_menutrans_scanner.py is used to generate menu_trans.vim.template. With the command python vim_menutrans_scanner.py <vimruntime> menu_trans.vim.template under project root dictionay, you could get the Untranslated messages list and Deleted messages list, which tells you the messages need to be translated and messages need to be removed from the template.

• vim_menutrans_merger.py is to apply menu_trans.vim.template to every language. With the command python vim_menutrans_merger.py menu_trans.vim.template /usr/share/vim/vim82/runtime/translationfile under project root dictionary, you could generate the menu items template in translationfile.Since vim_menutrans_merger.py will cover the translationfile, it's not recommended to apply the command directly to the installed version on the system. You should apply it to the translation files in Source Tree, or create a copy and apply it to the copy if your want to revise the file on System. Untranslated items in the generated files will be annotated. The annotations should be removed after the translations are completed. There are three translation formats: "TRANSLATION MISSING", TRANSLATION\ MISSING, TRANSLATION MISSING. "TRANSLATION MISSING" shouldn't be dropped the quotes. TRANSLATION\ MISSING shouldn't be dropped the backslash, which excapes the blank behind it and makes "TRANSLATION" and "MISSING" stick together.

• <vimruntime>

  • If you haven't installed Vim, just cloned the Vim official code repository, it's path is projectroot/runtime/.
  • If you have installed Vim on Windows, the default path is C:\Program Files\Vim\vim82.
  • If you have installed Vim on Linux, the default path is /usr/share/vim/vim82.
  • Other information could be found in :help $VIMRUNTIME.

With these tools, translators could only focus on how to translate instead of finding translation items. The translation framework still needs to be translated manually by someone who knows the language, but it's much easier.