====== Translation Related File Formats ======

These are the different storage formats for translations and files associated with translations that are supported by the toolkit. See also [[conformance]] for standards conformance.

Common concerns in handling these files using our [[base classes]] for a uniform API are [[quoting and escaping]].

===== Primary translation formats =====
  * [[XLIFF]]
  * Gettext [[PO]]

===== Other translation formats =====
  * [[CSV]]
  * [[.ini]] (including Inno Setup .isl dialect (from > v1.2.1)
  * Java [[properties]] (also Mozilla derived properties files)
  * Mozilla [[DTD]]
  * OpenOffice.org [[GSI]] (Also called SDF)
  * [[PHP]] translation arrays
  * Qt Linguist [[.ts]] (both 1.0 and 1.1 supported, 1.0 has a converter)
  * [[Symbian]] localization file (from > v1.2.1)
  * Windows [[RC]] files (from v1.2)

===== Translation Memory formats =====

  * [[TMX]] 
  * [[Wordfast]]: TM

===== Glossary formats =====

  * [[OmegaT glossary]] (from v1.5.1)
  * [[Qt Phrase Book]] (from v1.2)
  * [[TBX]]


===== Formats of translatable documents =====
  * [[HTML]]
  * [[iCal]] (from v1.2)
  * [[wp>OpenDocument]] - all ODF file types (from v1.2.1)
  * [[Text]] - plain text with blocks separated by whitespace
  * [[Wiki]] - [[wp>dokuwiki]] and [[wp>MediaWiki]] supported
  * [[Subtitles]] - various formats (v1.4)

===== Machine readable formats =====
  * Gettext [[.mo]]
  * Qt [[.qm]] (read-only)

===== In development =====

  * [[WML]]

===== Unsupported formats =====

Things that we would like to support but don't currently:

  * Wordfast: [[http://www.wordfast.net/index.php?lang=engb&whichpage=specifications#glo|glossary]] tab-delimited "source,target,comment" i.e. like OmegaT but unsure if any extension is required.
  * Apple:
    * [[ftp://ftp.apple.com/developer/Tool_Chest/Localization_Tools/AppleGlot/AppleGlot_3.2_UsersGuide.pdf|AppleGlot]] 
    * MacOS .strings file localization - Bug [[bug>371]] relates to this.
  * Adobe:
    * FrameMaker's Maker Interchange Format - [[http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FrameMaker/8.0/mif_reference.pdf|MIF]] (See also [[http://lino.sourceforge.net/src/100.html|python-gendoc]], and [[http://search.cpan.org/~rst/FrameMaker-MifTree-0.075/lib/FrameMaker/MifTree.pm|Perl MIF module]])
    * FrameMaker's [[http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=137|Maker Markup Language]] (MML)
  * Microsoft
    * Word, Excel, etc (probably through usage of OpenOffice.org)
    * [[wp>Office Open XML|OOXML]] (at least at the text level we don't have to deal with much of the mess inside OOXML).  See also: [[http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=120908|Open XML SDK v1]]
    * [[wp>Rich Text Format]] (RTF) see [[http://code.google.com/p/pyrtf-ng/|pyrtf-ng]]
    * [[wp>XML Paper Specification]]
    * .NET Resource files (.resx) - Bug [[bug>396]]
  * XML related
    * Generic XML
    * [[wp>DocBook]] (can be handled by KDE's [[man>xml2pot]])
    * [[http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/|SVG]]
    * [[wp>Android (mobile device platform)|Android]] [[http://code.google.com/android/devel/resources-i18n.html|resource files]] specifically [[http://code.google.com/android/reference/available-resources.html#stringresources|string resources]] 
  * [[wp>Darwin_Information_Typing_Architecture|DITA]]
  * [[wp>PDF]] see [[http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html|spec]], [[http://pdfedit.petricek.net/en/index.html|PDFedit]]
  * [[wp>LaTeX]] - see [[http://plastex.sourceforge.net/plastex/index.html|plasTeX]], a Python framework for processing LaTeX documents
  * [[http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/unoconv/|unoconv]] - Python bindings to OpenOffice.org UNO which could allow manipulation of all formats understood by OpenOffice.org.
  * Trados:
    * TTX ([[http://www.tracom.de/04/EN/techdoccenter/download/TRADOS_TTX-DTD.zip|Reverse Engineered DTD]], [[http://blogs.sun.com/timf/entry/beds_mattresses_and_open_standards|other discussion]])
    * Multiterm XML [[http://syntax.biz.pl/multiterm.html|TSV to MiltiTerm conversion script]]
  * Tcl: .msg files.  [[http://www.google.com/codesearch?hl=en&q=show:XvsRBDCljVk:M2kzUbm70Ts:D5EHICz0aaQ&sa=N&ct=rd&cs_p=http://www.scilab.org/download/4.0/scilab-4.0-src.tar.gz&cs_f=scilab-4.0/tcl/scipadsources/msg_files/AddingTranslations.txt|Good documentation]]
  * Installers:
    * NSIS installer: [[http://trac.vidalia-project.net/browser/vidalia/trunk/src/tools|Existing C++ implementation]]
    * WiX - MSI (Microsoft Installer) creator.  [[http://wix.mindcapers.com/wiki/Localization|Localization instructions]], [[http://www.mail-archive.com/wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net/msg15489.html|more notes on localisation]]. This is a custom XML format, another one!
  * [[http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/gencat.html|gencat]]: precedes gettext, looking in man packages is the best information I could find.  Also [[http://dev.linuxfoundation.org/navigator/browse/cmd_single.php?cmd=list-by-name&Cname=gencat|LSB requires it]].

===== Unlikely to be supported =====

These formats are either: too difficult to implement, undocumented, can be processed using some intermediate format or used by too few people to justify the effort.  Or some combination or these issues.

  * Trados: .tmw, Trados .txt (We are unable to find good documentation for these formats, you can interchange using TMX)