Readable Content and Title fields aren't detected during POT generation for localization

[MithosKuu]

Discussed in #357

^{Originally posted by MithosKuu January 16, 2025}
I'm messing around with localization and am hitting an issue with the Readable Component. The Interaction Text field is getting detected as a valid string to be localized during POT generation, but the Readable Content and Title fields are not.




Strangely Godot does see them as valid and translates them if I set them to an existing string

[Phazorknight]

Hm... that is odd. I haven't really looked into localization with Godot so my help will be very limited.

On the back end, all of these exported variables are strings, the interaction text as well as the readable title and content. So they should all work the same.

My first guess would be that it's more about the component scene / object scene instances, but then you'd probably have the same issue with the interaction text, so that's what baffles me a bit.

[MithosKuu]

Looks like it can only grab anything from the Intractables if the Intractable is the root node

If I add the Lobby scene to the POT generation list it doesn't grab any of the interactables at all

[Phazorknight]

Okay I took a quick look at how POT generation works. As it goes by resource, you'd have to add each individual scene to it. Packed Scenes within scenes don't seem to get properly detected by the POT generator.

Another issue that comes up with this is that if you reuse Components that are packed scenes and you add those scenes to the POT resources, that translation will be applied to all of them. This is probably fine for stuff like the interaction prompts like "Read this", but you don't want all your readable objects have the same content.

In order for this to work you will have to make the readable component "local" to your object.

As an example I've taken the Note_Welcome object from the Lobby demo scene. It contains a PackedScene of a ReadableComponent.
So for me to make the contents of that component show up in the POT generation and have these only apply to the Note_Welcome, I'll have to turn the ReadableComponent local.

Note how the names of the child nodes of the ReadableComponent are white as they are now all part of the Note_Welcome scene.

Then I add the Note_Welcome scene to the POT Generator resources:

In the end, all these strings now show up in the POT file:

So in summary: It's doable but needs some planning in how you structure your objects and their components.
I'd also wait until the very end of your project before generating the POT file as making your PackedScenes local will make you lose them being instances to the same PackedScene (and thus applying changes to all)