Now available for Visual Studio 2022
ReswPlus is a Visual Studio extension enriching your existing .resw files with many highly valuable features:
- Access to strings via strongly typed static properties.
- Automatically generate methods to format your strings
- Support typed and named parameters, literal strings, string references and Macros
- Pluralization support (for 196 languages!).
- Support empty states when the number of items is zero.
- Add HTML markups to your strings (bold, italic, hyperlinks, etc...)
- Variants support
- Generate a Markup extension to access to your strings with compile-time verification.
Supported:
- C#, VB.Net, C++/CX and C++/WinRT.
| Resw | Resw with ReswPlus | Resx | Android XML (for reference) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Modify UI properties via resource files (x:uid) | ✅ | ✅ | ||
| Generate strongly typed accessors | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | |
| Generate String Formatting methods | ✅ | |||
| Support Plural forms | ✅ | ✅ | ||
| Support 'None' state | ✅ | |||
| Support HTML formatting | ✅ | ✅ (indirectly) | ||
| Auto-generate methods for string formatting | ✅ | |||
| Support literal strings in string formatter | ✅ | |||
| Support Macros in string formatter | ✅ | |||
| Support String references in string formatter | ✅ | |||
| Strongly typed string formatting | ✅ | |||
| Support Resources in libraries | ✅ | ✅ | ||
| Support String variants (including genders) | ✅ |
⚡ How to install ReswPlus - Learn how to install ReswPlus
⚡ Use ReswPlus in your project - Learn how to use ReswPlus in your projects
ReswPlus can generate a class exposing all strings from your .resw files as strongly typed static properties, providing a compile-time-safe way to access those strings XAML-side or code-side.
🗨 How to generate a strongly typed class
ReswPlus can add support of pluralization and plural forms to your localization strings. Plural forms of 196 languages are currently supported by ReswPlus.
🗨 How to add pluralization
⚙️ Support Empty States
⚙️ Languages supported
To simplify your ViewModels and Views, ReswPlus can directly manage the formatting of your localization and generate strongly typed methods to format your strings.
🗨 How to use String Formatting
⚙️ Named parameters
⚙️ Use String References
⚙️ Use Literal Strings
⚙️ Use Macros
Unlike Android localization files, resw files don't support emphasis (bold, italic, underlined...). To address this lack, ReswPlus improves resw files and add support of emphasis using HTML tags (similar to Android).
ReswPlus can support many variants/versions of the same string and allow you to display the one you want based on criteria (variants to support genders, different messages depend on some criteria...)
String formatting in C++ is quite different and more complicated than in C#/VB.Net. ReswPlus provides a way to use the same string templates as you use in .Net (via String.Format) but in your C++ project, making your resource files shareable with .Net libraries and simplifying your code.
In addition to features to enrich resw files, ReswPlus also provides some interesting tools to improve your productivity or make it easier to use/support resw files in your workflow and localization process.
This is very unfortunate, but not all localization tools and localization companies support recovery files. This is even more of an issue when you want to support Pluralization, as resw does not support it by default. To resolve this issue, ReswPlus now includes a converter to and from Android XML files, a format that supports string pluralization and supported by all tools available on the market.
Simply right click on the resw associated to the default language of your app and select ReswPlus > Export to Android XML format. To convert the Android files once localized, you can use the command-line tool provided with the nuget package (packages/ReswPlusLib.xxxx/Tools/ReswPlusCmd\ReswPlusCmd.exe with the following arguments xml-to-resw -i <folder path> <output path>.
If you don't want to use Visual Studio to convert your resw files to Android XML files, you can use the same command-line tool with the following arguments resw-to-xml -i <resw file path> <output file path>