Overview: WPF Editor

Use the WPF Form Editor to localise Microsoft WPF applications. The editor supports all UNICODE languages including Bi-di, DBCS and Eastern European language groups.

Working with WPF Layouts

Due to the unique design of WPF, forms can control layout and seldom need to be manually resized during the translation process. However, the forms need to be designed using WPF Panels which are central to the overall design of an WPF application.

When inserting a WPF assembly in your CATALYST project, the results window reports on any missing assembly. It is important to have all referenced assemblies present in the same folder as the inserted assembly. This is because CATALYST loads those reference assemblies, even if they are not listed in the Navigator window, and those are used by the .NET framework when rendering the forms in Visual View (for example, the screenshot above).

If localizable assemblies have not been fully processed to include unique identifiers in the format of x:UID, localizable strings will not be parsed on insertion in CATALYST. Here is an example of the report displayed in the Results window for such an assembly:

Display all BAML in the Navigator tree by clicking the Navigator View button and selecting Show non-localizable BAML recources.

Continuing with the example above, the 12 identified resources will display after selecting the option:

This offers the opportunity to review the name and contents of the BAML resources reported as non-localisable in the Results window.

Debug information on inserting or extracting WPF assemblies

During insertion or extraction of WPF assemblies, some exceptions can be thrown when CATALYST tries to parse or write the BAML.
To record the debug information generated by the .NET framework, create DotNetDebug\dotnetdebug.txt folder and file in the Public folder C:\Users\Public\Alchemy Software\Catalyst 2023.

What do you want to do?

Click on a control using the mouse or select it from the Sting list. The contents of the control will be displayed in the Translator Toolbar. Enter your translation there and press OK to confirm your translation and move to the next control on the form.

When a control is selected draw-handles will appear surrounding it. There are two types of draw-handles.

Auto-Sizing Controls

Auto-sizing controls have red draw-handles. This signifies that they will resize automatically to accommodate your translation and that you cannot re-size them manually.

Manual Controls

Manual controls have grey draw-handles. This signifies that they can be repositioned and re-sized during the translation process.

Movement and re-sizing of WPF controls may further be limited by how they are placed on the form by the application developer. For example, if a control is placed in a WPF panel, you may find that certain types of re-sizing are not allowed.

For information on WPF Panels and how these effect the localization process, please refer to Advanced WPF Forms.

Use the Shift key while selecting controls with the mouse to create a group of controls.

For information on WPF Panels and how these effect the localization process, please refer to Advanced WPF Forms.

Use the Translator Toolbar to set the properties of a control. WPF controls have many different properties that can be set-reset during the translations process.

To set/reset a control property, select the segment in the String list and go to the Properties window.

In this example the panel selected in the WPF editor has several unique properties. Some of these are made available for translation.

To set/reset these properties, click on the property name and type in a new translated value.

For example, to set the color of this panel to white, click on the property Background and enter #FFFFFF.

Enter an underline character(_) adjacent to the hotkey letter to assign this as a hotkey.

Use the Glossary Consistency Check, located on the POWER TRANSLATE ribbon, to automatically check translations for consistency. This check will scan each translation in a dialog form and verify that the translation matches the glossary file.

Any discrepancies will be reported in the Results Toolbar.