EXT: XLIFF¶

What does it do?¶

Since TYPO3 4.6, the official localization format is no more ll-XML (locallang*.xml files) but XLIFF (locallang*.xlf files).

XLIFF is used by Pootle, the TYPO3 translation server available at http://translation.typo3.org . It is expected that in a near future, XLIFF will allow extension developers to get access to a much better localization API, probably unified between Frontend and Backend and with some nice features such as support for placeholders, plural forms, ...

At the moment, there may at first seem to be no real advantage to switch to this format because it is only natively supported by TYPO3 4.6 and above. An extension may be packaged with both ll-XML and XLIFF localization files (actually this is what you get when you retrieve localization updates within Extension Manager) and if so, XLIFF will be used with a higher priority in TYPO3 4.6 whereas older versions will only “see” the ll-XML versions.

However, managing two different formats of localization files is cumbersome. This is why this extension has been created!

This extension lets you distribute your extensions with only XLIFF localization files and it will take care of dynamically creating the corresponding ll-XML versions when it is installed in TYPO3 4.4 or TYPO3 4.5. This way, you can start taking advantage of enhanced workflows to deal with localization such as using Virtaal for managing your texts and labels.

How does it work? Just add 'xliff' as dependency within your ext_emconf.php and forget about ll-XML localization files!

Screenshots¶

An extension is nothing without a screenshot. Here is the output of some extension of mine, that comes with XLIFF localization files and that is going to be installed (or updated) in TYPO3 4.5:

Integration within your Extension¶

Open your ext_emconf.php file and add a dependency to this extension:

$EM_CONF[$_EXTKEY] = array(
    'title' => 'Your Extension',
    ...
    'version' => 'x.y.z',
    'constraints' => array(
        'depends' => array(
            'php' => '5.2.0-',
            'typo3' => '4.4.0-4.6.99',
            ...
        ),
        'conflicts' => array(
            ...
        ),
        'suggests' => array(
            'xliff' => '1.0.1-',
        ),
    ),
    ...
);

If it makes sense for your extension, you may put the dependency into the 'depends' section of course. The problem is that it will somehow force the installation of this extension in TYPO3 4.6 even if the conversion will never be triggered in the end.

How does it work?¶

This extension XCLASSes Extension Manager to hook into the install process. It checks that:

• Current extension is either local or global (does not make sense to show for a system extension)
• Current extension contains XLIFF localization files
• ll-XML conversion was not already performed for current extension's version (state is stored within typo3conf/xliff_conf.php)

How to switch from ll-XML to XLIFF?¶

Use extension extdeveval *newer than* 3.2.0 or use SVN trunk ( http://forge.typo3.org/projects/show/extension-extdeveval ). It comes with a handy tool to convert ll-XML localization files to XLIFF:

Then, you should simply delete the old ll-XML files.

1.0.0¶

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