inkle / inkle/ink

Export all possible strings [Localization]

Open
#514 7 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub
Dominant language
C#
Stars
4.9k
Forks
540
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

Quick version
---
I am looking to export every possible string that could be generated from an ink story. From my initial (but short) read through the documentation, this isn't currently supported and I am looking for either a place to start an implementation of this or where it is supported in the case I just happened to miss it.

I've posted the context as to why I am doing this below (localization) in case anyone else is interested.

Context
---

Hello!

I am investigating moving away from a client's proprietary scripting system and replacing it with ink and it's Unity runtime. So far I (and my client) have been impressed with the features and ease of use, as well as the fact it works without issue on consoles, all of which were key to adoption.

One final hurdle, though, is localization. I know it has been discussed before in several places but most having the solution suggested in #98 where the localization team would learn the ink format which I think is a little unreasonable for a standard localization team but also may not work for all translations in a easy way.

I believe that localization should be kept separate from the ink runtime, if possible. This keeps ink simple and leaves the team to focus on more important tasks, which is of benefit to everyone.

My perfect approach would be to leverage the [gettext](https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/) standard for localization and have ink populate the template file in an intelligent way, taking advantage of pluralization and contextual strings when appropriate. This would provide a minimal template file for translators to work with and minimize the time for translation as well as the cost. It's also something that ink could do (or support a tool to do) since it would likely use or build from the existing resolution code for generation.

That said, supporting more complex situations like pluralization and particular strings would still take a fair bit of work and for a first pass I am okay with simply generating a template with every single possible string that could be produced from an ink story. It's not ideal, no, but it would definitely work and my current use case isn't using many of the generative features in ink so it wouldn't have a large impact.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Assessment

This issue has not been assessed yet.

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.