Localization

Localization (a.k.a. l10n) is the process of improving the experience of non-English speaking users of a Synchronet BBS.

• Although Synchronet does support UTF-8 terminals to a degree (primarily for output of non-ASCII characters), the native character set of files read/displayed by the Synchronet Terminal Server is CP437
• The CP437 character has only limited support for non-English/Western locales, so if UNICODE characters are required to support a new language translation, that will provide additional challenges
• Software localization usually considers other aspects of a locale beyond just language (e.g. currency indicators, number separators, etc.), but Synchronet is currently only focused on language localization
• The Synchronet developers are primarily English-only speakers, so help from non-English speaking sysops and developers is very much needed for a fully-translated BBS experience
• Although this article is in the “custom” namespace of the Synchronet Wiki, the hope is that Synchronet will eventually ship with full support for the most common non-English-speaking (but Western) users: French, Spanish, and German

• ctrl/text.lang.ini file can be used to replace text.dat and JavaScript text strings with translated/localized strings
• text/menu/lang/* files can be used to replace menu files with translated/localized equivalents
• The [JS] section of ctrl/text.lang.ini files can be used to replace any JavaScript strings that are passed-to/returned-from gettext() (see load/gettext.js)

• custom index
• text.ini file
• gettext.js
• Menu Files