Localizing Application (main) Menu?

Question

I'm porting a UNIX application which uses the Qt framework (Qt, not QuickTime) to Mac/Cocoa. Life is good, generally. Qt has a Cocoa implementation, so with some Objective-C++, I've gotten lots of Mac-specific bits working.

I can't get the main menu (i.e., the Application menu) to translate. It's set using:

    [NSApp setMainMenu:menu];

I've got my en.lproj, ja.lproj, fr.lproj, etc. folders set up, and they have InfoPlist.strings files. Qt handles the internal localization of application-specific menus. But if I switch languages, I still have "Quit Avogadro".

I've read through as much documentation in the Mac Dev Center as possible, but can't find an answer.

I know that strings in the mainMenu are handled by Cocoa -- they're not localized in any Apple application. Any ideas on the magic trigger? Any ideas for where to look?

Thanks in advance!

Maybe I should put this another way. Is this problem a good candidate for a Technical Support Incident with Apple? — Geoff Hutchison
Really? Down votes with no comments? Note that this doesn't apply to Qt5, I haven't checked to see if it's still a problem. — Geoff Hutchison

Sandra E Sandra E · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-21T18:20:54

I wanted to add some information to this, in case someone else is looking to do this. I was also trying to modify the application main menu and I was attempting to set it in the awakeFromNib method. This never worked because according to this thread we need to modify the application main menu AFTER the menu has been set. Otherwise, the application will always use the title found in its Info.plist. So, this means that if you ever change your application's name, you never have to update your application's MainMenu.nib.

Localizing Application (main) Menu?

2 Answers