Support for making strings read-only in weblate based on <note> content in XLIFF

[ddeveloperuch]

Hello Weblate team,
I have a question regarding the XLIFF file format in Weblate.
Is it possible to automatically mark strings as read-only if their <note> tag contains a specific value - for example, Note = "DNT" (DNT is an abbreviation for do not translate)?
Here’s a sample of the trans-unit:

<trans-unit id="VTi-yh-qnQ.normalTitle" xml:space="preserve">
  <source>Button</source>
  <target>Button</target>
  <note>Class = "UIButton"; normalTitle = "Button"; ObjectID = "VTi-yh-qnQ"; Note = "DNT";</note>
</trans-unit>

[nijel]

Why aren't you using the standard way in XLIFF to specify that?

See https://docs.oasis-open.org/xliff/v1.2/os/xliff-core.html#translate

[ddeveloperuch]

@nijel You’re absolutely right, the XLIFF 1.2 spec defines standard translate="no" attribute on elements to indicate that string shouldn’t be translated. However, Xcode doesn’t provide any built-in way, either in its UI or via command line tools - to set or manage the translate attribute during XLIFF export. The only supported mechanism to communicate metadata about translatability from the source code is through <note> tags. So in practice, if we want to mark a string as “do not translate” during export, we have to encode that intention in a <note>.

[nijel]

As this is non-standard behavior, it can't be supported until we implement #1897 what will make customization of file formats easier to implement.

[ddeveloperuch]

Thank you for your reply, I will wait for the release of version 5.13.