Multi language support

[snownico0722]

Hi, thank you for this useful project.

Could you please consider adding Chinese language support

I think this would make DesktopFences easier to use for more Chinese-speaking users. If translation files are needed, I would be happy to help provide or review the Chinese translation.

Thanks again for your work!

[limbo666]

Nice Idea but it need heavy work on the code. Maybe in a later version

[vittop89]

Adding to this rather than opening a new thread, since it is the same problem for
another language (Italian, in my case).

Up front: the code and the analysis below were produced by an AI assistant (Claude - Opus 5)
working under my direction. I set the goal, reviewed the result and tested the build
on my machine. I am saying so because I think you should know what you are being
offered before you spend time on it, and I would put the same note in the PR
description.

@limbo666 you said this needs heavy work on the code, and you were right. So we did
that part, to find out how bad it actually is. It is done and building.

What the work amounts to

There are 363 hard-coded assignments to UI properties (Content, Header, Text,
ToolTip, Title) across ~39,500 lines. The mechanism that replaces them is small:

• Localization/Strings.resx — neutral English, the current strings unchanged
• Localization/Strings.<culture>.resx — one per language
• a thin Strings wrapper over ResourceManager, which falls back to the key itself
  so a missing entry shows up as a visible label instead of throwing
• the UI language follows Windows, with an override property for testing

MSBuild generates the satellite assemblies on its own (it\Desktop Frames.resources.dll),
so a release stays a single folder and English users see no difference at all.

Two things deliberately left out

1. Log messages stay in English. You read those when someone reports a bug, and a
   translated log is a log nobody can search.
2. Persisted strings stay untouched — "Medium", "Details", "Gray" end up in
   frames.json. Those are keys, not text: translating them would silently break
   existing configurations. This is the trap that makes the refactor look worse than it
   is, and it is avoidable.

Status

Infrastructure done, plus TrayManager and MessageBoxesManager migrated, on a branch
off bad2fd5. It builds with MSBuild and resolves correctly: it-IT gets Italian,
en-US gets English, and an untranslated culture (tested with fr-FR) falls back to
English rather than showing empty labels. The remaining 346 strings are mechanical work
and I am willing to see them through.

Questions before going further

1. Would you take a PR along these lines?
2. One PR, or the infrastructure first and then smaller ones per file group, so you can
   review it in pieces?
3. Any naming convention you want for the resource keys?

If the answer is no, that is genuinely fine — I will keep it local and stop bringing it
up. But since @snownico0722 offered to do Chinese as well, the mechanism would serve
more than one language, and the part you called heavy work is the part that is already
written.

[vittop89]

Update on this, in case it is still of interest.

I said I would do the heavy part and see how bad it actually was. It is
done, it builds, and it has been my daily driver for the past few days.

Branch: https://github.com/vittop89/DesktopFramesPlus/tree/add-localization
23 commits on top of bad2fd5, 43 files, source and .resx only.

It ended up being two things, not one

The first is the translation itself: every string a user can read now goes
through the resources — context menus, tray menu, Options, Customize, all
the dialogs, About, and the seven bundled plugins. 457 keys.

The second is the part I think matters more to you, and it was not in my
original offer:

• A language picker at the top of Options → General. It lists every
  language the program can actually show and defaults to "Automatic", which
  is exactly today's behaviour. Nobody who does not want this ever sees a
  difference.
• Language packs that need no compiler. A .resx dropped into a
  Languages folder beside the executable is read at run time and wins over
  the compiled resources. So somebody can add a language you have never
  shipped, or fix a wording they disagree with, by editing a text file. There
  is an import button in the same section that copies the file into place and
  checks the file name is a real culture code first.

That second point is what turns this from "one more language to maintain"
into something that maintains itself: you do not have to own the
translations, and you do not have to rebuild to accept one.

Three things that needed a code change, not just a string move

1. Several places looked up a control by its label — m.Header.ToString() == "Customize..." to position menu entries, a switch on the Details column
   header to pick the sort mode, another on the Options tab title to pick its
   colour. Translated labels would have broken all three silently. They now
   compare against the same constants, or against an index that was already
   being passed in.

2. The colour, Portal view, icon size and text size dropdowns had their
   displayed text doubling as the stored value. Each entry is now a
   ComboBoxItem with Content for the user and Tag for the file, so
   frames.json and options.json keep their English values in every
   language. I was most careful here: backed up my own configuration, saved
   from the UI, diffed the files, confirmed nothing had moved.

3. A few buttons had a fixed pixel width that fits the English label and
   clips anything longer — "Delete Selected" was cut mid-word in Italian.
   They use MinWidth plus padding now.

What deliberately stayed in English

Log messages and their categories: you read those when someone reports a bug,
and a translated log is a log nobody can search. Property names passed to
UpdateFrameProperty, plugin ids, pack:// resource URIs, frame type names
— those are keys, not text.

About the eight languages — please read this part

Italian is mine and I stand behind it. The other seven (French, Spanish,
German, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Russian, Polish) are seed
translations, produced with AI assistance and not reviewed by native
speakers. Each file says so in a comment at the top. I would rather tell
you plainly than have you find out from a user.

They are built so this is safe: a key that is not translated is omitted
from the language file rather than copied from English, so .NET falls back to
the neutral resource on its own. Tested with ja-JP, which has no file at
all — every string comes back in English, nothing breaks.

If you would rather take Italian only and let native speakers contribute the
rest through the Languages folder, that is completely reasonable and the
structure is built for it. @snownico0722, the Chinese file is there as a
starting point if you want to correct it.

Disclosure

The code and this analysis were produced by an AI assistant working under my
direction. I set the goals, reviewed the result, and have been running the
build myself.

One small unrelated thing

.gitignore still has a single line pointing at Code/Desktop Fences/…,
from before the rename. Build output is not ignored at the moment, which is
easy to commit by accident. I left it alone rather than mixing an unrelated
change into this work, but you may want to look at it.

How would you like this?

One PR, or the infrastructure first and the language files after? Any naming
convention you want for the resource keys — I used area prefixes (Menu*,
Opt*, Lbl*, Btn*), easy to change before I open anything.

Happy to rebase onto 2.7.8.x whenever it lands.

[snownico0722]

I'm glad to see the progress you're making. Keep it up! When the code is finalized and Chinese translations are needed for submission, I'll get involved as well.

[vittop89]

It is already merged into main. The Chinese pack is machine-made, so your review would be very welcome whenever you have time. It is Localization/Strings.zh-Hans.resx: only the lines need changing.

[limbo666]

@snownico0722 Here is the latest language fiel for review: Strings.zh-Hans.resx.txt
It would be great if you check it out.
I'm working on a new release once I deal with few bugs.
Stay tuned. Thanks @vittop89

[limbo666]

@snownico0722 looks great!

[snownico0722]

@snownico0722 looks great!

@snownico0722 looks great!

Thanks! Glad it looks good :)

The translation actually went through several rounds of revision. I compared translations from multiple LLMs, reviewed them manually and picked the best wording from each, then refined the terminology and phrasing by hand. Finally, I built and ran the app to proofread everything in the actual UI and make further adjustments based on context.

Thanks for merging the PR and sharing the screenshot!

[limbo666]

v 2.7.8.376 support language selection and custom language addition https://github.com/limbo666/DesktopFramesPlus/releases/tag/2.7.8.376