Editor

The KBabel Handbook
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# 3.2. Editor

The editor preferences category is divided in 3 subwindows: General, Appearance, Spell Check, and Fonts. All these settings customize how the editor behaves and looks.

## 3.2.1. General

Here is a set of checkboxes. First checkbox in upper side sets if fuzzy status is reseted automatically at first character input in MsgStr editor. When this option is disabled you have to manually choose Edit->Unset Fuzzy Status or press the Ctrl-U shortcut. This means the string "`, fuzzy`" is removed from the entry's comment.

The downside checkboxes group are very usefull in assisting not for translation corectness, but for logical. Many messages represent menu items with keyboard accelerator and C-like formated strings.

Check Arguments

  When is checked C-format strings in original and translation are checked to find if number of format sequences is identical and also order.

Check Accelerator

  Check to find if number of accelerator characters is identical in both original and translated string. Please note that accelerator marker is &, but not in every programming toolkit. See Miscellaneous section below to find how to change keyboard accelerator.

Check Equation

  This is a feature for KDE project development. `.desktop` files are simply text files which store various parameters in `value=key` format. Some of these `key` are translatable. The only restriction is to maintain the left side of equality unchanged. Equation check allow you to spot many errors determined by fuzzy msgmerge algorithm. Note that are situations where this function generate false errors on some PO-files.

Look for Translated Context Info

  Some original messages are marked with context information to make them unique even they represent same word. This is because in the simple "Save" word is translated in many kinds in other languages. Context info is marked with `_:`. Many unexperienced translators do even context info translation and fill their PO-files with garbage. Check this box to make sure you will be warned about these errors in file.

Beep on error

  Your system bell will beep when you switch on entries with errors like those described above.

Change text color on error

  This is another type of warning about errors in current message. For persons deaf impaired or are bored by bell noise, here is a good solution. Check this. See also Appearance tab to know how to change text color on errors.

## 3.2.2. Appearance

These options let you configure the appearance for the message editor. In upper part there are 4 checkboxes:

Highlight syntax

  Setting this option will enable syntax highlighting for special characters, accelerators and text background in msgid viewer and msgstr editor. If don't have a monochrome display or have a visual impairment, you should enable this option.

Highlight background

  Background will be highlighted only for existing characters in msgid and msgstr. This includes spaces. That is useful, if you don't want to see surrounding quotes (see below) for the PO entry, you will still be able to observe starting and ending spaces in a text line.

Mark whitespaces with points

  When you feel the need to count spaces right from an eye or background highlighting is not your taste, then you can check this option to view whitespaces filled with points. Note that point is a point sign in the center of a character box, and not a decimal point.

Show surrounding quotes

  If you think that viewing terminal char in msgstr or msgids text line is better for you then check this option to view surrounding quotes for every text line. Same thing if your experience editing PO files with ordinary text editors make you feel safe if you can track starting and ending double quotes in PO entry lines.

For different items in edited text there are different color choices to make editing easy. Colors can be changed by clicking on color-picker buttons. From select color dialogs you can choose from standard colors, custom colors or just pick color from any part of your screen.

Background color

  This sets the background color for characters in MsgID view and MsgStr editor. For general background color of edit box you must use KDE Control Center.

Color for quoted characters

  Here you can adjust the color for escaped characters like (\") double quotes or (\n) newline.

Color for syntax errors

  This is the color for the entire text entry if errors are detected when you try to save PO file. Errors are triggered by not terminating identically both msgid and msgstr, or escaping characters incorrectly.

Color for c-format characters

  This sets the color for a characters sequence like in C language printf or scanf functions. In general these start with (%) percent char and are continued by one char.

Color for keyboard accelerators

  Keyboard accelerators start with (&) "ampersand" character in KDE but if you are translating for other projects there might be an different character marking the accelerator key. See Miscellaneous section below to find how to change keyboard accelerator.

The status for the current edited entry is marked by three LEDs. For your convenience you can choose where to put these LEDs: in statusbar or in editor (between msgid and msgstr entry). If have difficulties to view some colors or you want to make sure you can track LED status changes easily without moving your eye, you can select the prefered color using the color button chooser.

## 3.2.3. Spell Check

Here you can set your spell checking preferences. These is for interest if you have dictionary file for your translating language. Bellow are items to consider setting:

Create root/affix combinations not in dictionary

  For new words added to personal dictionary, spell check engine will create root/affix combinations to match more than one word (variations).

Consider run-together words as spelling errors

  If this is turned on, then joined words will be treated as errors. However, this situations is very usual in German language which have a very large number of compound words.

Dictionary

  From the popup list you can choose which dictionary to use. Note that you must install apropiate dictionary for your language. Check your ispell or aspell distribution to figure out if you have one.

Encoding

  Here you choose encoding for your text. This options is passed to spellchecker. It is encoding for your words dictionary. See kspell documentation for more details.

Client

  Backend program for spell checking. Currently are to: ispell (International Ispell) and aspell.

Remember ignored words

  Keep track of user ignored words when spell check PO-files. It's very convenient to ignore abbreviations or strange letter combinations you meet in GUI interfaces.

File to store ignored words

  Here you can set location of file for ignored words. Clicking on folder icon from editline right side you can choose path and name for ignored words file. Default is `$(HOME)/.kde/share/apps/kbabel/spellignores`, where `$(HOME)` is your home directory.

## 3.2.4. Fonts

This is a classic font chooser dialog with a little addition. You can select to view only fixed fonts by checking the Show only fixed fonts option. This is highly recomended for easy translating. The font dialog let you set font family, style, size and encoding. The bottom box shows a preview of the current for user convenience.

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