INI Localization

.ini files are commonly used in applications on various platforms. There is no standard for .ini files and the applications can vary in their use of key-value delimiters, comment masks, comment positions, sections nesting, support for blank lines…

So Lingohub has applied the following rules for .ini files that should match common variations.

Format

• Key-value pairs are delimited with the equal character (=) or colon (:) and terminated by a new line.

• Values can not spread to multiple lines.

• Section declarations can have this form: [section].

• All keys after the section declaration are associated with that section.

• There is no explicit “end of section” delimiter and sections end on the next section declaration or at the end of the file.

• Sections can not be nested.

• The translation title will be a combination of the section and the segment key. This combination has to be unique in your Lingohub project.

• Placeholders are not supported because there is no standardized format. This means Lingohub is not able to detect placeholders to give you qualitychecks support.

• Comment lines can start with a hash sign (#) or semicolon (;) and everything up to the end of the line is treated as a comment.

• A comment is assigned to the next key-value pair unless there are any blank lines or section declarations in between.

Example

Additional example files can be accessed here.

; this comment is ignored because it is not directly followed by a key-value pair

; this comment will be stored along with the section information
[section1]

; comments in .ini files can start with hash
hello_user = Hello stranger!

[section2]
; this key belongs to section2 and no longer to section1
welcome_message = Welcome back, we have missed you

; multi line comments belong to the next key value pair
; as long as they are not interrupted by a white line
visit_count = this is your millionth visit to our site

References

• INI file on en.wikipedia.org