ATN Action Translator-Windows Help


Copyright © 2016/17 by KyrSoft

Contents


License

This software is published under a Creative Commons License, the Software is provided on an AS IS basis, without warranty of any kind. No Liability for Consequential Damages.

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Overview

The ATN Action Translator-Windows  is a tool for translating and adapting Photoshop actions in a way that they are localized and then do also run in other localized versions of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Some of the ATN Action Translator-Windows features are:

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Installation

In order to use ATN Action Translator-Windows you must have must an actual installed Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.2 on your computer. To install ATN Action Translator-Windows, just copy the contents of it's ZIP file into a directory of your choice. Where the AtnActionTranslator-Windows.exe file is the main ATN Action Translator-Windows file, which must be executed.

In the following table, <somedir> refers to an installation directory of your choice.

File to copy Target directory
Contents of AtnActionTranslator.zip <somedir>/atn-actiontranslator/

To start the ATN Action Translator-Windows you can just do a double click on it's EXE file, afterwards the ATN Action Translator-Windows should appear and is ready to use.

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Uninstall

To uninstall ATN Action Translator-indows just delete it's directory contents, the whole installation directory, where you copied the contents of the AtnActionTranslator.zip file in.

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Usage and Documentation

Since most people should be overall familiar with the usage of nowadays User Interfaces, the following just describes shortly some ATN Action Translator-Windows specific topics.

Selecting Photoshop Actions and replace Rule files with the ATN Action Translator 

The ATN Action Translator-Windows  offers two possibilities in order to select actions ( atn icon files and replace rules ( rul icon files). The first is via Drag and Drop of those files on to their corresponding Textboxes:

drop here

Or you can use instead the file selection buttons. In both cases a selection of the right files will be visually indicated through a changing of the icons and the beneath text field will then show the path of the selected file.

drop here 2


ATN Action Translator-Windows Quick Overview

window usage

  1. The selection and display area for the initial Photoshop ATN actions.
  2. The selection and display area for ATN Action Translator-Windows replacement rule files (.rul files).
  3. The selection and display area for the translated Photoshop ATN actions (the translated copies). 
  4. The "Edit Rule..." button which opens the replacement rule editor for editing and customizing of rewrite rules.
  5. The Reset All Files button which clears all the settings and will reset to virtually zero initial values.
  6. The "Little-Endian checkbox", only used for cases where this is explicitly required for the translation of actions.
  7. The actual "Start Translation" button, which is activated only when all the files (the points 1 + 2 + 3) have been selected.
  8. The console output area, which shows some process information during an activated translation.
  9. The "Delete and Copy Output" buttons, which delete or copy the console contents to the clipboard.
  10. The obligatory "Exit" button of the application itself.

 

The ATN Action Translator-Windows Rule Editor

For the translation and adaptation of Photoshop Actions to local versions of Photoshop, you need translated and ordered according to word lists (eg for PS English -> German PS), which then can be used for the search and replace. Such an association could be considered roughly as a kind of rule, at least I have used this name for it in the ATN Action Translator-Windows  [BTW ... cynics would say now because I could think of nothing better to ;-)].

For this purpose, the ATN Action Translator-Windows offers one small rule editor, that allows to define and use find and replace rules for the translation of Photoshop actions. By pressing the "Edit Rule ..." Button the following dialog opens...

rule dialog

...in it's table you can create appropriate search and replace texts and save them under a new rule file name, or load and modify already created rules again. Make just sure that the find / replace texts are always entered in pairs, ie to a search text, there must also be a corresponding replacement text, or in other words, an entire table row must be filled. Otherwise it may cause problems and errors later during the execution of rules at runtime. - In the table the column marked with # rows can be selected using check boxes and thus explicitly stated, which search/replace texts (ie the rows) have to be used during a translation process. Only the selected rows are used for an action in a translation process, those rows that are not marked will be ignored.

For example:
[x] searchstring1 replacestring1 (will be used)
[x] searchstring2 replacestring2 (will be used)
[ ] searchstring3 replacestring3 (will not be used)
[ ]

(will not be used)

 

If you change or modify a rule inside the Rule Dialog don't forget to save that rule afterwards, since the Rule Editor doesn't save automatically any changed rules. You have to force the Rule Editor with "Save Rule" button to save any possibly changed rule. When saving a rule under a new file name and closing the Rule Dialog with the Ok button, also don't forget to reload that saved new rule file afterwards under the main window in order to use it.


IMPORTANT! It should be explicitly noted that the order of applying specific search/replace texts in rules is often very relevant and important for Photoshop actions. If you don't take care to this you will risk that text passages might be accidentally overwriten in actions (search texts have only been replaced almost half) and then later other search text can no longer correctly be found in the sequential execution of search/replace runs.

For example: one should first look for "Background copy" and replace it by "Hintergrund Kopie" before you are going to search for "background" and replace it with "Hintergrund". Otherwise in reverse order, ie when first searched for "Background" it will be replaced with "Hintergrund" and all potential matches of the "Background copy" text in an action would be replaced to "Hintergrund copy" text. This will then cause problems for a subsequent search after "Background copy" as text, since it could not be found and replaced anymore. The result would be that the translated Photoshop action does not work then!

Wrong:
[x] Background
Hintergrund
[x] Background copy Hintergrund Kopie


Correct:
[x] Background copy Hintergrund Kopie
[x] Background Hintergrund


The Best:
[x] Background
Hintergrund
[x] copy Kopie


CONCLUSION! One must act in the creation of rewrite rules very carefully, with foresight and make oneself clear, that these search and replace processes are always taking place one after the other.  So in sum up keep in mind, that the executed search/replace processes do run like a queue through the entire Photoshop action one after the other.


File format of the ATN Action Translator-Windows rule files

Rule files are common text files in the UTF-8 encoding, where every single rule is defined as one text line with three semicolon separated entries, namely a 1 or 0 bool flag used as an indicator for true/false here, a searchstring and a replacestring. Every rule line is terminated by one line ending, just like common text lines.

A single Rule line:
 true | false
;
Searchtext
;
Replacetext
;
<nl>
The contents of a rule file with 4 defined rules/lines, where only the first two lines are here marked to be actively used:

true;Background;Hintergrund;
true;Layer;Ebene;
false;Levels;Tonwertkorrektur;
false;copy;Kopie;

Quick Overview of the ATN Action Translator-Windows Rule Editor

rule dialog usage

  1. The selection and display area for ATN Action Translator-Windows  replacement rule files (.rul files), which also supports Drag and Drop.
  2. This column shows the rowline numbering for the entries.
  3. The selection column, it's purpose is to select only those rows which should be used for a translation process. Only via the checkboxes selected rows will be used during a translation run.
  4. The column for the search entries.
  5. The column for the replace entries.
  6. Buttons for the inserting-, deleting- and the reordering of rows and for selecting/deselecting all rows.
  7. The buttons for loading and saving rule files.
  8. The Cancel and Ok buttons of the rule editor dialog, pressing the Ok button takes the actual edited over into the main window of the ATN Action Translator-Windows .

 

 

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Known Issues

1.) If you change or modify a rule inside the Rule Dialog don't forget to save that rule afterwards, since the Rule Editor doesn't save automatically any changed rules. You have to force the Rule Editor with "Save Rule" button to save any possibly changed rule. When saving a rule under a new file name and closing the Rule Dialog with the Ok button, also don't forget to reload that saved new rule file afterwards under the main windowin order to use it.

2.) The find/replace entries in the table of the rule editor must be paired, they are used for translation at run time, but currently not validated by the program logic for pairing. I.e. here the user must provide on their own responsibility, that there is no marked column of a selected table row which does have no entry!  Always remember that those lines you want to use for the translation process must be marked (enabled via it's checkboxes) and should have paired entries!

3.) There should be no blank marked lines in a rule of the rule editor, since when saved and loaded as a rule file those marked (enabled) blank lines  would otherwise be used for compilation and they are currently not caught at run time.

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Compatibility

The ATN Action Translator-Windows version is C#-based and has been tested with the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.2 running under Windows 10 on a x64 machine. This version might not work with earlier Microsoft .Net Framework versions.

In order to work correctly, user must have an installed "Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.2".

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Contacts

If you have problems with the installation of the ATN Action Translator-Windows or support questions, you are welcome to send an e-mail (see the below e-mail address) to KyrSoft.

If you believe that you have encountered a bug in the operation of the ATN Action Translator-Windows or have a suggestion for an improvement that will be of use to many others, please send an e-mail to: info@kyrsoft.com.

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Copyright © 2016/17 by KyrSoft