Clicking on the "Show I18N status of files" link above will display three counts for each adp file - the number of potential translatable text messages, the number of temporary tags (on the syntax <#message_key text#>), and the number of message key lookups in the file (i.e. occurencies of \#message_key\#).
A fully translated adp must have 0 tags, it typically has 0 or only a few texts deemed translatable by our script and any number of message key lookups (the last count). Our script sometimes considers for example Javascript to be translatable, but don't worry - you will have the opportunity to tell it to leave such texts untouched.
The last two checkboxes in the form above let you choose which of the two available scripts to run on the selected adp files. You have to choose at least one of these actions, by default both are selected and for almost all cases this is the setting that we recommend. Running both those actions on an untranslated, or partially translated adp, should automate most of the translation and leave you with little manual work to do.
To the best of our knowledge there is no harm in running those actions multiple times on files.
If the adp status for a file shows 0 translatable texts, then the "Replace texts with tags" action will do nothing. Likewise, if the adp status shows 0 tags then "Replace tags with keys and insert into catalog" action will have no effect.
If you select "Replace text with tags" then for each adp file a script will attempt to replace translatable text with temporary <#message_key text#> tags. You will have the opportunity to edit the message keys to use. You will also be able to indicate when a piece of text should be left untouched (since it should not be subject to translation, for example Javascript code).
Any pieces of text that our script could not automatically extract, for example pieces of text with embedded adp variables (i.e. \@var_name\@), will be listed on the result page. Make sure to take note of these texts and translate them manually. Suppose for example that our script tells you that it left the text "Forum \@forum_name\@" untouched. What you should do then is to edit the corresponding adp file and manually replace that text with something like "<#Forum Forum#> \@forum_name\@". After you have made all such manual edits you can simply run the second action labeled "Replace tags with keys and insert into catalog".
Entries for the extracted messages will be added to the en_US catalog file only if they do not already exist in that file. If the messages don't contain the package key prefix this prefix will be added before insertion into the message catalog.
The message tags are processed from the adp:s in the order that they appear. If the key of a message tag is already in the catalog file then the message texts will be compared. If the message texts in the tag and in the catalog file are identical then no insertion is done to the catalog file. If they differ it is assumed that the new message should be inserted into the catalog file but with a different key. In this case a warning is issued in the log file and an integer is appended to the message key to make it unique before insertion into the catalog file is done.