Suggested support tool to minify XLIFFs

Hello Martin

Thanks again for an excellent tool. There is an option/functionality that we use which could be of interest to others as well. When we build a project, we have added a step to minify the XLIFF files to remove (what we think are) unnecessary tags.

We’ve added the following to a pre-build.js:

var fs = require('fs');

const files = fs.readdirSync('src/locale', {encoding: 'utf8'});
files.forEach(file => {
  if (file.match(/^(messages\.[a-z]{2,2}(-[A-Z]*)*)(\.xlf)$/)) {
    const minified = file.replace(/^(messages\.[a-z]{2,2}(-[A-Z]*)*)(\.xlf)$/g, '$1.min$3');
    console.log(`Minifying src/locale/${file} > src/locale/${minified}...`);
    if (fs.existsSync(`src/locale/${minified}`)) {
      fs.unlinkSync(`src/locale/${minified}`);
    }
    fs.writeFileSync(`src/locale/${minified}`,
      fs.readFileSync(`src/locale/${file}`, {encoding: "utf8"})
        .replace(/<!--[\s\S]*?-->/g, '') // remove html comments
        .replace(/<context-group[\S\s]*?context-group>/g, '') // remove context-group tags with content
        .replace(/<source[\S\s]*?source>/g, '') // remove source tags with content
        .replace(/\sstate=\".*?\"/g, '') // remove state attributes
        .replace(/\sdatatype=\".*?\"/g, '') // remove datatype attributes
        .replace(/(>)\s*(<)/g, '$1$2'), // lastly, linearize
      {encoding: 'utf8'}
    );
  }
});

and are including the resulting *.min.xlf files (<50% size) instead of the original translated files in the build.

We have not run into any problems with this approach, and perhaps it could be a welcome addition to your package?

/Johan

[GeorgDangl]

@johannks, the XLIFF files are only used by the build process, they are not part of the output. When you build for a locale and supply an XLIFF file, the translations are applied during the build process.
Minimizing the XLIFF file itself should have no impact on the generated bundles.

[martinroob]

Hello Johan, thanks for your suggestion, but to be honest I am not really convinced. First of all I do not expect to have a real win by minimizing the XLIFFs. The build process will not be measurably faster, I guess. Second, the informations you are removing are not used by the angular build process, but they can be used by translation tools and you will lose this by removing them. For example the source tags are a hint, where the translation is used and this can be a valuable information for translators.

Regards Martin