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Plain Text

 

Extension .txt
Smartling Identifier plainText 

The plain text document format is a simple way to quickly translate text.

Default Parsing

Smartling considers each line of text in the document a single translation string. Each string is considered unique by file - which means if two files have the same line of text - they will be captured as two separate strings.

XML Characters

The following XML character are always escaped. You can control this by using the entity_escaping directive.

Character (character name) Escape sequence

< (less-than)

&lt;

> (greater-than)

&gt;

& (ampersand)

&amp;

' (apostrophe or single quote)

 &apos;

" (double-quote)

  &quot;

Directives

File directives are supported via our API (inline is not supported). Directives are specified in the following format:

API Parameter

smartling.[directive_name] = [value] 

Here are examples of supported directives for plain text files:

Directive name Values Description Example

entity_escaping
  • auto (default) 
  • true
  • yes 
  • false
  • no

(case-insensitive)

Controls whether base characters ( > < & " ) are "escaped" into entities when delivering translations.

This can be set universally for the whole file via API.

For example, your translation might look like this:
This is an <hr> & " example string4

By default, using the "auto" setting, we will assume this is HTML from the <hr> tag.

When the translated file is downloaded, the translated string will be escaped as:
This is an <hr> &amp; &quot; example string4

Using smartling.entity_escaping = false will allow is above string to appear unescaped.

entity_escaping_strategy
  • none (default)
  • propagate

(case-insensitive)

Used to retain entity escaping for all non-base entities. For example, normally we turn &copy; into © but if we use this new directive the translation will automatically update to use escaping from the source. For each entity character, we'll check to see if it was escaped in the source and try to match (propagate) it in the target.

If HTML5 entities are required as well, you must use the entity_escaping_type=propagate directive.

Numerical entities are not considered at all with this directive, and are treated normally.

smartling.entity_escaping_strategy = propagate

If the same character is both escaped and unescaped in the same string, propagate will return the characters in the translation escaped in the same order as they were in the source. However, if there are a different number of characters in the translation where the translation process removed or added some and the escaping is inconsistent among them, propagate will escape all entities for that character.

This does not affect source content at all - so using it will not result in new strings.

propagate will only affect non-base entities - all named entities except &amp; , &quot;, &lt;, &gt;. Base entities continue to be controlled by HTML detection and the entity_escaping directive.

 

entity_escaping_type

  
  • html4 (default)
  • html5

(case-insensitive)

By default, all html4 entities are unescaped, except the basic set: &lt; &gt; &amp; &quot;.

When this directive is set to html5, all html5 entities will be unescaped as well.

smartling.entity_escaping_type = html5

placeholder_format
  • NONE
  • C
  • IOS
  • PYTHON
  • JAVA
  • YAML
  • QT
  • RESX

Used to specify a standard placeholder format.

smartling.placeholder_format = IOS

Specifies iOS-style placeholders for the file.

placeholder_format_custom
  • Custom (Java Regex)
  • NONE - disables any current custom placeholders.

Specifies a custom placeholder format. Any text in your file matching the regular expression you provide will be captured as a placeholder.

See Placeholders in Resource Files for more on placeholders.

smartling.placeholder_format_custom=\{([^}]+)\}

Any characters surrounded by curly brackets, e.g., {first name}, will be treated as a placeholder.

pseudo_inflation

Integer values between

0 - 100

Sets the percentage by which original strings are inflated when downloading pseudo translations. If this directive is not set, pseudo translations are 30 percent longer than the original strings.

smartling.pseudo_inflation = 80

Downloaded pseudo translations will increase the length of original strings by 80 percent.

whitespace_trim
  • on (default)
  • yes
  • true
  • off
  • no
  • false
  • leading
  • trailing

 

A whitespace is any character or series of characters that represent horizontal or vertical space in typography. When rendered, a whitespace character is not a visible mark, but does occupy an area or space on a page.

Although whitespaces are necessary within a string (typically to separate words), unnecessary whitespaces can be found at the start of a string (leading) and at the end of a string (trailing).

With this directive, you can manage whitespace trimming.

By default, the leading and trailing whitespaces are trimmed.

You can choose to disable trimming or specify trimming for leading or trailing whitespaces.

The directive can be used inline or as the API request parameter.

 

smartling.whitespace_trim=on

Smartling will trim leading and trailing whitespaces (default)

 

smartling.whitespace_trim=off

Smartling will not trim leading or trailing whitespaces

 

smartling.whitespace_trim=leading

Smartling will trim only leading whitespaces

 

smartling.whitespace_trim=trailing

Smartling will trim only trailing whitespaces

 

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