Proposal: Excel file alternative

[KMili]

Do you have any plans to rework text resources so that excel file would not longer be needed?

The problem is that excel file cannot be binary compared.

I bet all Git users will agree with me.

Also, current excel file generator creates file, that MS Excel must try to recover (unreadable characters). After recovery, I can see that it is completely different thing in binary view.

Having text resources as text based file would be so useful and easy to work with (for example when reworking resources and not worrying about corruption or missed something).

One more thing is that it might cost some time for TGFX developers in the short term, but not in long term: ease of changes, more professional look, versatility for users.

[Martin KJELDSEN]

Preaching to the choir 🙂

It's something everyone wants but other things keep being more pressing. In terms of git, we've worked with custom layers before where you could input the texts as text and then merge that - Ultimately converting that text to an excel file.

Additionally, you can modify your .gitattributes to use specific tools to diff and merge excel files.

/Martin

[KMili]

So is it excpected to happen with some release or just not in your roadmap?

[Martin KJELDSEN]

It's not on the roadmap for the immediate future, but as i said, you could create your own layer for it if it's bothering you too much. Doing projects for customers i'd have to say it wasn't really a problem when we had great project structure (e.g. developers aren't just inputting data into the text sheet as they like, creating all kinds of conflicts).

If you're working from a pre-made design you'll usually have the texts laid out in advance that you can input into your text sheet. But, yes, it would be much better to have a language module working on text files instead in terms of versioning. For now it's low priority compared to graphics features and performance.

I'll let you know if that changes! 🙂

/Martin

[KMili]

"(e.g. developers aren't just inputting data into the text sheet as they like, creating all kinds of conflicts)"

Sorry, but I don't completely get what you are saying. I am working professionally with TouchGFX for years, but I don't think we are talking about the same thing.

"[...] when we had great project structure"

Can you describe how it was or maybe I can download it? I am just curious. If I remember correctly, current file structure has been like that for at least since 4.6 version.

"If you're working from a pre-made design you'll usually have the texts laid out in advance that you can input into your text sheet."

* Pre-made you mean form examples?

* Texts laid out in advance? Is there any example of that? Or you're talking about texts.xlsx?

[KMili]

"(e.g. developers aren't just inputting data into the text sheet as they like, creating all kinds of conflicts)"

Sorry, but I don't completely get what you are saying. I am working professionally with TouchGFX for years, but I don't think we are talking about the same thing.

"[...] when we had great project structure"

Can you describe how it was or maybe I can download it? I am just curious. If I remember correctly, current file structure has been like that for at least since 4.6 version.

"If you're working from a pre-made design you'll usually have the texts laid out in advance that you can input into your text sheet."

* Pre-made you mean form examples?

* Texts laid out in advance? Is there any example of that? Or you're talking about texts.xlsx?

[Martin KJELDSEN]

Two developers working on the same line will cause a conflict. regardless if it's a text file or an excel sheet. But its much simpler to fix the conflict in the first case. But, usually on major projects this isn't even a problem for us because there's someone responsible for texts and it's not just developers editing this file with whatever they feel should be in there.

i wasn't talking about the structure of the application, sorry, but the structure of a project team.

By pre-made i mean that usually you get your design from a User Experience and graphics team, so texts are already decided and you'll input them into the text sheet at the start of the project. But i know that's not always the case and there may be changes along the way.

Sorry if i was confusing 🙂 Moral of the story is - Someone central being in charge of texts will help with the conflicts as long as we're still on an excel solution.

/Martin

[KMili]

OK, now I see.

But as initially stated it is also not convenient to just edit text in Designer software. Sometimes it is necessary to use MS Excel.

MS Excel and TGFX framework tools creates different binary files (.xlsx).

Since you cannot easily see binary file changes, it is needed to visually re-validate all the texts after editing texts.xlsx to be 100 % sure that everything is ok after MS Excel "tried to recover the file" before doing official FW release to clients (clients of companies that deliver TGFX based products).

Try it yourself. Open texts.xlsx generated by Designer and open/save-as it with the newest MS Excel. Then compare with binary compare tool -> many many binary changes.

[Martin KJELDSEN]

There are some GNU tools you can use with git (.gitattributes) to diff/merge excel files.

The excel file created by the designer may be from an older version, sure, and there may be binary differences, but the texts should in a predefined section in that file which can be understood by some diff tools.

/Martin