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Help translating

If you want to participate in translating Form History Control you can find some detailed instructions here.

Download the add-on

First download the source code of the add-on to a location of your choosing. You can download the latest version from github.com and use the green "Clone or Download" button.

Either use a git client (if you have that installed and know how to use it) or just simply download the zipfile and unpack it.

Install and change language (Firefox) Firefox

If you want to test your translation, you can do so in a separate Firefox profile. See support.mozilla.org on how to create an extra profile. Within this profile you can load the add-on version you downloaded in the first step.

Install the downloaded add-on by entering "about:debugging" in the URL bar and then click "Load Temporary Add-on". Choose the "manifest.json" file of the add-on you downloaded in the first step (see also this mozilla webpage for detailed instructions). The add-on is now installed and available in your profile.
If you exit Firefox the add-on will not be available if you start Firefox again, you have to load the temporary add-on again. The data will remain available if you exit Firefox, only when the add-on is removed using the "about:debugging" page, data will be removed as well.

If you are using an international version of Firefox, it may very well be that you are not seeing the desired translation but the (default) english translation instead. In that case you can switch the default language by entering "about:config" in the URL bar, search for "general.useragent.locale", and set the value to the tag for the desired language, for example "de" for German. You may also have to change the intl.locale.requested property accordingly.

In some cases switching the locale does not work for whatever reason but it probably has something to do with not being able to display international characters. If switching the language does not work you are probably using an international version, in that case download and install a Language specific version of Firefox.

If you made changes in one of the language specific files you may have to reload the add-on (on the about:debugging page) in order to see the changes.

Install and change language(Chrome) Chrome

If you want to test your translation, you can do so in a separate user profile. See Google Chrome Help on how to create an extra profile (people).

To load the Form History Control extension use the More tools option from the settings menu by clicking the tiny dots (or bars, in some cases) in the top right next to the URL bar. From the More tools submenu choose Extensions to open the extensions page. On top of the extensions page, use the Load unpacked button to select the directory where you downloaded the add-on.

To switch the language in Google Chrome:

  • Open the Settings page by clicking the tiny dots (or bars, in some cases) in the top right next to the URL bar
  • Scroll down to the very bottom and open Advanced settings
  • More options are shown, go to the Languages section
  • Use the menu next to the desired language (tiny dots) and select Display Google Chrome in this language (if you do not see the desired language, use the Add languages link to add it to the list)

If you made changes in one of the language specific files you may have to reload the add-on (on the extensions page) in order to see the changes. Click the refresh icon to reload the extension.

The language specific files

The file you should translate is located in the _locales\xx\ subdirectory where xx is the language tag of the country, the file should be named messages.json. If the xx directory not exists yet, create it and copy the files from \_locales\en\ into the new xx directory. Find more on this subject including a list of country tags here: Reference Global Objects Intl.

The messages.json file contains multiple labels each having a message and a description part. Only translate the message part! The description is only meant to give the translator an indication of what and where the message is used for. Please do not add empty lines or break up existing lines into multiple lines.

The \locales\xx\ subdirectory also contains a datatables.json language file, this file is used by the jquery datatables plugin. For this plugin there are already many translations available. For a complete list see: https://datatables.net/plug-ins/i18n/.

Submit your translation

When finished translating submit the translated files so I can incorporate the new or updated language files in the next release.

If you are using git do a pull request, otherwise send the translated messages.json and datatables.json files directly to my email address.