Apple

With .strings and .stringsdict, keep simple strings in one and plural strings in the other, as Xcode does. A String Catalog holds both.

StringsCopy Anchor Link

/* Home screen title */
"home.title" = "Bon retour";
"home.greeting" = "Bonjour, %@ !";
"share.hint" = "Appuyez sur \"Partager\"";

• Each entry is "key" = "value";. Both sides must be double-quoted.
• /* ... */ and // comments are skipped, including in the middle of the file; the same characters inside a quoted string are kept. Comments are not imported as descriptions and are not written on export.
• Escapes decoded: \", \\, \n, \t, \r. Any other backslash sequence, including \U Unicode escapes, loses its backslash.
• A duplicate key, a missing = or ;, or an unterminated string or comment is an import error that names the problem.
• The file must be UTF-8. Convert UTF-16 .strings files first, for example with iconv -f UTF-16 -t UTF-8.

On export, each key is one line, \\, \" and newlines are escaped, and plural keys are left out (they belong in .stringsdict).

StringsdictCopy Anchor Link

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>items</key>
    <dict>
        <key>NSStringLocalizedFormatKey</key>
        <string>%#@value@</string>
        <key>value</key>
        <dict>
            <key>NSStringFormatSpecTypeKey</key>
            <string>NSStringPluralRuleType</string>
            <key>NSStringFormatValueTypeKey</key>
            <string>d</string>
            <key>one</key>
            <string>%d article</string>
            <key>other</key>
            <string>%d articles</string>
        </dict>
    </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

Each top-level <key> is a plural key. Its NSStringLocalizedFormatKey must reference a variable (%#@name@, any name), and that variable's dictionary must be NSStringPluralRuleType, with one <string> per plural category.

• Each category must be one the locale uses. zero in an English file is an import error, because English has only one and other.
• One variable per entry. When the format key references several variables (%#@files@ in %#@folders@), only the first variable's forms are imported, with a warning.
• The format key is not kept. Export always writes %#@value@ as the format key, a variable named value, and NSStringFormatValueTypeKey d. Text around the variable in your format key (%#@count@ remaining) is not carried; put it in each plural form instead.
• The standard Apple DOCTYPE is accepted. A DOCTYPE with its own declarations is rejected.

On export, simple keys are left out, so a project with no plural keys exports an empty plist. Export uses four-space indentation.

String CatalogCopy Anchor Link

Xcode 15 String Catalogs are JSON files holding every language of a table:

{
  "sourceLanguage": "en",
  "strings": {
    "home.title": {
      "comment": "Home screen title",
      "localizations": {
        "fr": { "stringUnit": { "state": "translated", "value": "Bon retour" } }
      }
    },
    "items": {
      "localizations": {
        "fr": {
          "variations": {
            "plural": {
              "one": { "stringUnit": { "state": "translated", "value": "%lld article" } },
              "other": { "stringUnit": { "state": "translated", "value": "%lld articles" } }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "version": "1.0"
}

ImportCopy Anchor Link

A catalog is read for one locale at a time: the locale you import picks the matching localizations entry (pt-BR and pt_BR match). Keys with no localization for that locale are skipped, which is normal for a catalog. When you import the catalog's sourceLanguage and a key has no explicit localization, the key itself is the value, as Xcode does.

• comment becomes the key's description.
• variations.plural becomes a plural key. Each category must be one the locale uses.
• Device and width variations, and substitutions, are skipped with a warning.
• The state of a string unit is not imported: an import never marks a translation as reviewed.
• Only catalog version 1.0 is read.

ExportCopy Anchor Link

An export is a catalog with a single locale: version 1.0, sourceLanguage set to the project's source locale, comment from the key's description, and every unit with state translated. It is not a replacement for a multi-language catalog in your Xcode project, which holds every language in one file. transglot init does not set up String Catalogs.

PlaceholdersCopy Anchor Link

Import and export keep format specifiers such as %@, %d, %lld and %1$@ exactly as written. The quality checks compare the printf-style ones (%d, %1$s) between source and translation; see Placeholders for the syntaxes they recognize.

RelatedCopy Anchor Link

• Plural forms
• File formats