Alef/stringtable.csv – User

W.I.P.

Start from here: http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Stringtable.csv

My way

Only with ArmA.

Openoffice.org

• Open the stringtable.csv you want

1. Use "Character set" -> "Unicode (UTF-8)". You may get "Western Europe (Windws-1252/WinLatin 1)" by default, but it is wrong.
2. Use "Separated by" -> "Comma"
3. Use the "Text delimiter" " (double quote). These are going to be removed, but we will add it later again
   • This is needed, otherwise sentences with comma will be spanned across columns.

• Do the work
• Save the file as openoffice document (.ods) and work with that.

When ready to export back to arma

1. Select all the columns but the first
2. Do a "Find & Replace"
3. Open "More options"
4. Check "Current selection only"
5. Check "Regular expressions"
6. Type .* in "Search for"
7. Type "&" in "Replace with" (be sure you put exactly "&", with the double quotes around)
8. Click "Replace All"

Your document is now ready to be exported. You can still work this way, if you want. To do the final export to ArmA

1. Click "Save as ..."
2. Use "Save as type:" -> "Text CSV (.csv)"
3. Check "Edit filter settings"
4. Click "Save"
5. If you get a dialog warning about, confirm you want to keep the current format.
6. As you get "Export to text files" options:
   1. Use "Character set" -> "Unicode (UTF-8)"
   2. Use "Field delimiter" -> " , " (comma)
   3. Use "Text delimiter" -> none, delete what it is showed there
   4. Check "Save cell content as shown"
   5. Click "OK"

If you had empty rows, these will be exported with commas, something like ",,,,,,,," . Don't know if will cause problems. In case, just delete empty rows before exporting. The stringtable.csv will have a BOM marker (hex: ef bb bf) at begin. I'm using vim with :set nobomb option to remove it.

Google Documents

This can be nice when have to work with more people or just to have it published on the web. I use this in combination with Openoffice.org.

1. Go to your Gogole Docs page: http://docs.google.com/
2. Click "Upload"
3. Browse your computer to select a file to upload
4. What do you want to call it? Choose a name other than stringtable.csv.
5. Click "Upload file"
6. You get the spreadsheet with the " (double quotes) removed.
7. Work with that

As you are ready to export it back:

1. Go to "File" -> "Export" -> ".ods"
2. Save the Openoffice.org spreadsheet files somewhere.

You are now at the point "When ready to export back to arma" above.

MS Excel

MS Excel doesn't have the option to use UTF-8 when exporting to .csv .