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GEOVIA Surpac

Technical Information

Command Line Execution

The Translation Manager is invoked using Java from the command line. The command line instructions for starting the Translation Manager are as follows:

Required elements

  • JAVA - the path to the Java Virtual Machine executable, java.exe. This is required to run all Java programs, and is located either in the \bin directory of the system java installation, or in the \NT_i386\jre\bin directory of a Surpac installation.
  • JAR - the full path to the ssiclient.jar file, which is located in the \share\java directory of a Surpac installation, or may be provided stand-alone to the user by the Source Code Administrator. This file is an archive similar to a zip file, containing Java classes required by Surpac and several other utilities. It is required to start the Translation Manager or Translation Builder.

    The jar file must always be preceded by the -classpath switch for the JAVA executable, and also be followed by the name of the class within the jar file to execute, ie com.surpac.mlt.TranslationEditor or com.surpac.mlt.TranslationBuilder.

Switches

  • -a - Invokes the Translation Manager in master mode, also refered to as all choices mode, for use by the Source Code Administrator.
  • -w - Invokes the Translation Manager in work mode, for use by Surpac programmers.
  • -l - Invokes the Translation Manager in translator mode, for use by translators.
  • -cl - Invokes the Translation Manager and automatically performs a merge operation with a translation file supplied at the command line. Only useful to the Source Code Administrator or as part of a Surpac build.
  • -cw - Invokes the Translation Manager and automatically performs a merge operation with a work database file supplied at the command line. Only useful to the Source Code Administrator or as part of a Surpac build.

There are also some switches specific to the Translation Builder:

  • -wb - Invokes the Translation Builder and automatically performs a merge operation with a work database file supplied at the command line, outputting the changes to the generated Surpac message files.
  • -fix - Invokes the Translation Builder and performs a check for conflicts in the numeric IDs of the entries of the master database, updating the database with any changes that are necessary.

Optional elements

  • MASTER DATABASE DIR - the path to the directory that contains the TranslationMaster.uni file.
  • WORK DATABASE DIR - the path to the directory that contains (or will contain) the TranslationWork.uni file.
  • TRANSLATION FILE - the path of the translation file to be edited by the user. Note that this an optional argument in all cases.

There are also some options specific to the Translation Builder:

  • MASTER DATABASE FILE - the path of the TranslationMaster.uni file.
  • WORK DATABASE FILE - the path of the TranslationWork.uni file.
  • RESOURCE OUTPUT PATH - the path of the directory which will contain the output resource files.
  • HEADER FILE OUTPUT PATH - the path of the directory which will contain the output header file.

Creating Shortcuts

After starting the Translation Manager from the command line a few times, this will soon become quite tiresome. A shortcut will take the repetition out of repeating common tasks.

A shortcut to the Translation Manager is created as follows:

  • Click the right mouse button on an empty area of the Windows Desktop, or if you wish the shortcut to be somewhere other than the desktop, navigate your way to the desired folder from within a Windows Explorer window, and then click the File menu.
  • From the resulting menu, select New and then Shortcut...
  • In the resulting Create Shortcut dialog, enter the complete command you would normally use to invoke the program from the command line, then click Finish to create the shortcut.
  • Review the properties of our new shortcut by right-clicking on the shortcut icon and selecting Properties from the resulting menu.
  • Click the General tab and change the name of the shortcut (at the top of the dialog) to something more descriptive.
  • Click the Shortcut tab and verify that the command line given in the Target field is correct. You may also find it convenient to specify the current working directory in the Start in field, e.g. C:\translations. Any paths present in the command line will be relative to this directory, and any file browsers invoked in the Translation Manager will start in this directory.
  • Click the Change Icon... button if you would like to replace the default icon for the shortcut. You can also enter a comment if you wish.
  • Click OK when you are satisfied with the settings you have entered. Remember that these can be altered later using the Properties dialog.

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