The Reference Browser displays context material pertaining to a segment.  This information is displayed as the user selects that segment - giving more context, thus ensuring a better quality translation. An internet browser is used to display the content, so a wide variety of reference formats is supported.  Images, audio, video and documentation formats, for example, could be used as references for a segment.

Context Links are links to external files.  They are not embedded within a Project TTK.  

This example shows 'Tag names exceptions:' as the selected segment in the string list and the associated image appearing in the Reference Browser on the right - this is giving a visual representation of the string in situation as it appears in the project's user-interface screen. This additional knowledge assists in ensuring the most accurate translation is provided.

Viewing Context Links

Automatic Display

Press the automatic refresh button in the translator toolbar so it remains selected. In this mode the Reference Browser is refreshed with context links every time a segment is selected. If not docked, the Reference Browser comes into view for a moment before minimizing again.

On Demand Display

If automatic refresh is not enabled, refresh the reference browser on-demand using the Refresh button

 

Adding Context Links

Always add context links from the Reference Root:
C:\Users\Public\Alchemy Software\Catalyst 12.0\ReferenceRoot

If you have a lot of images, build a folder structure in your ReferenceRoot directory for maintaining the links.  

To transfer images between machines, simply copy the ReferenceRoot folder structure to the other machine.  All context links will remain active.
 

 

Adding a Context Link

  1. Select one or more segments in the workspace
  2. View the Properties of the segment in the Translator Toolbar.
     
  3. Click in the Path field under Context to add a link to the selected segments.
  4. You can type/paste in  URLs

    OR

    For local images - always copy the file to the ReferenceRoot folder first and add the link from there.

 

Online references are stored as entire URLs. Using online URLs is very powerful as they are available to anyone who opens the project file without having to transfer the image files along with a project TTK.

 

Highlighting an area on the context reference

Once a Context path is added to a string, you can highlight a specific area of the reference in the browser window.

Click the button to add an area to the reference. Using the cursor and the corner handles, this area can be positioned over the relevant string to make quick for the user to locate and view in context.

 

 

Clicking the will remove the highlight from the reference.

The button enables the user to automatically centre the reference browse view over the highlighted area.

This is useful when often the reference browser window is smaller than the reference itself and a quick scroll to the highlight is only a click of a button away.

Select the color the highlight with

Once a highlight has been positioned, resized and color selected, click the to store the details within the context path.

Once applied, the path will have a series of coordinates appended to the link.

 

For example:

 

Applying References in batch

Context Links can be added in batch using xliff.  The industry standard xliff format has structures for storing context information.  If context information of type x-reference is present, CATALYST will place the value in the Path field for the Context property.  Using this mechanism, Context Links for many segments can be applied on insertion.  The following image shows the syntax for storing the context path.

 

Relative Paths

The path to local files are stored as relative paths.  To make portability easier, they are always stored as paths relative to the Reference Root. This means that if a Project TTK is moved, the images do not need to be moved.  The location of the TTK has no bearing on the location of the image.

The Reference Root is a CATALYST setting that is configurable via the FILE > Options > Application.  The default path is in your Public folder, i.e.   C:\Users\Public\Alchemy Software\Catalyst 12.0\ReferenceRoot\

You should build up your context links in this area, or change the location for the ReferenceRoot and build your image structure at that location.

Resolving Paths

If a URL is present as a context link, CATALYST will try to connect to the internet to display the referenced image.

If a file path is present as the context link, CATALYST will resolve the path relative to the Reference Root to locate the image.  If this resolves to a path, that file is displayed in the Reference Browser.  If no file is found at that location, a message is displayed to the user indicating that the file could not be located.  

Example 1

If the Reference Root is set to the default "C:\Users\Public\Alchemy Software\Catalyst 12.0\Reference Root\"
... and a context link is set to "ScreenShot.jpg"
... the reference browser will resolve the path as
   "C:\Users\Public\Alchemy Software\Catalyst 12.0\Reference Root\ScreenShot.jpg"

Example 2

If the Reference Root is changed to "C:\MyProject\images\"
...and the context link is set as ".\Project1\ScreenShot.jpg"
...the reference browser will resolve the path as
"C:\MyProject\images\Project1\ScreenShot.jpg"