Localized plugin menu entries

[bernd2007]

Does anyone here know if it's possible to localize the menu entries that are created by Photoshop from my plugin's resources?

I've been disappointed by the limitations of the Photoshop SDK often enough by now, so I expect one has to do this by building the resources (and thus the plugin) for multiple languages. I've found references to ZStrings in the SDK, but it doesn't look like this works to localize plugins, only the host application.

Any pointers or crazy ideas welcome.

[ilvar]

  We've experimented with providing in8l builds and we could get more or less everything properly localized. You may want to keep in mind that in order to see localized plugin titles, you have to use localized version of Phoshop and/or running it on the system with the proper locale set (i.e. no Chinese plugin titles on an English PS/system). You may be able to avoid providing multiple binaries if your installer is smart enough to detect the target system and set proper plugin resources as part of installation postprocessing to use the correctly localized PIPL.

Good luck.

[bernd2007]

When you say "we could get more or less everything properly localized" you are talking about the actual UI of your plugins, I imagine, but not the menu titles?

I consider having the installer do the resource installation, but if at all possible I prefer dynamic choice of language. We do that for the plugin UI entirely on our own. Only those menu entries I can't find a good solution for.

On Mac I will try to put localized resources inside the bundle, and see if that has an effect. But I don't know if something similar would work on Windows.

[ilvar · Accepted solution]

No, I actually do talk about the menu titles (e.g. these found under File->Automation); pretty much everything else is in appilcation domain, so I guess it wouldn't be discussed in this forum

The real trick there is to correctly compile the PIPL resource and have it correctly included in the application's .rc file. Just replacing resources such as plugin name/title with unicode strings does not work. To compile a resource to a specific language you'll have to create a separate pipl.r with the translated resources and it should be Cnvtpipl.exe-compiled with language-specific flags (e.g. -c for Chinese); also your product .rc file should include #pragma code_page(code_page#) with the appropriate code-page. I believe in some versions of the SDK there was a bug in certain language-specific PIPL generation so you _may_ have to tweak it a bit if you get compilation errors.

Assuming that everything was done correctly, the menus should just magically work when your plugin is run on a properly localized system.

[bernd2007]

Wow, that are encouraging news. I will experiment along those lines. Thanks a lot!