message_lint

message_lint is for software developers or product localization managers who want to find out if their product source content contains any localizability (L12y) issues before it goes for localization.

This command line tool can read in:

• react-intl message resource (JSON) and
• Java properties files

A bird eye's view of message_lint

What common L12y issues does message_lint look for?

L12y Issue	How to resolve
text fragments	each message should be a complete sentence/phrase
articles before placeholders	the value that goes into the placeholder should include the article
percentage formatting	the value that goes into the placeholder should include the percent sign either prefixed or suffixed
embedded URLs/URIs -- this is really not part of the user-facing content. Updating a URL should not trigger a localization workflow.	the URLs/URLs should be external to the messages. They come into the message through the placeholders.
inadequate plural nouns	use the ICU message format to support multiple plural noun forms
use of ASCII punctuation	replace apostrophe with Unicode Right Single Quotation (U+2019)
	replace double quotation with Unicode Left and Right Double Quotation (U+201C, U+201D )
	replace ellipses "..." with Unicode Ellipses (U+2026)

How does it find these issues?

message_lint uses regular expressions (regex) to find these issues.

message_lint checks each message if it...	L12y Issues
begins with , or .	Text Fragments
begins with one of the following: and or
ends with ,
ends with one of the following: the to by on and or
contains {placeholder} preceded by	Articles before placeholders
a an a(n) or the
contains {placeholder}% {0}%	Percentage Formatting
contains one of the following: http:// https://	URIs/URLs embedded in messages
<a href="...">...</a>
contains {placeholder} followed by:	Inadequate support for multiple plural nouns
year month week day
hour min sec
groups issues users people other boards spaces
contains placeholder that uses a number {[0-9]+}	Non-named placeholders
contains any of following:	use of ASCII Punctuation Chars
' apostrophe (U+0027)
" double quote (U+0022)
... 3 periods (U+002E)

Why you should check your source content?

Checking your source content for L12y issues will save time and money if you do it early in the product development life cycle (PDLC).

Localization specialists will be grateful too 😄

Getting Started

Install dependencies

Run the following at the command line:

% cd message_lint

% pip install -r requirements.txt

First, take a look at the command line help for message_lint

message_lint % bin/message_lint --help

usage: message_lint [-h] [-o OUTPUT_FOLDER] [-v] files [files ...]

lint a list of message resource files

positional arguments:
  files                 list of files to be linted

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -o OUTPUT_FOLDER, --output_folder OUTPUT_FOLDER
                        folder where the report files will be written to.
  -v, --version         show program's version number and exit

Thanks for using message_lint!

%

Now try out the test files we provided

You must pass JSON message files and Java (message) Properties files to message_lint.

By default, the lint reports will be generated and located in the same directory as the test_files under message_lint_reports.

The lint reports will only be generated in .json format.

Here are some example command lines you can try out:

Example 1.1

When you run the following command line, message_lint will examine each message in test_files\test.json and generate a report of localizability issues if any. By default, the lint reports will be generated and located in the same directory as the test_files but in message_lint_reports

message_lint % bin/message_lint test_files\test.json

Example 1.2

You can also pass it more than one file.

message_lint % bin/message_lint test_files\test.json test_files\test.properties

A lint report will be generated for each message resource file.

Example 2

You can specify a custom output folder where the lint reports will go.

message_lint % bin/message_lint test.json test.properties --output_folder ..\output

The lint reports for this next command will located in output\message_lint_reports