From workaround to retirement: the story behind our XLIFF editor
Not every tool is built to last forever – some simply solve the right problem at the right time.
Back in 2014, we built and released a small public tool to help solve a problem we kept encountering in our own development work. At the time, there wasn’t an easy way to work with XLIFF files exported from Xcode, particularly for people who weren’t comfortable editing XML directly.
Over the years, our XLIFF editor helped developers and teams simplify the translation workflow for iOS projects. But like many tools created for a specific moment in time, its role has gradually diminished. As this product’s lifecycle draws to a close, we wanted to share the story behind it - why we built it, how it was used, and why we’ve decided to stop supporting our XLIFF editor.
The problem
While a lot of developers are used to XML based files, it’s not a particularly user-friendly format that everyone inherently understands. It can be confusing to read and hard to update.
For example, when viewing an XLIFF file, at least one generated by Xcode, not all items have a <target> tag, and it may not be obvious how or where to add them. Also, without the right tooling, it’s really easy to introduce syntax errors into the file such as mismatched tags.
When working on previous projects at Brightec, we couldn’t just hand the XLIFF files to our clients and expect them to return the updated files. The process instead usually involved spreadsheets and other documents being emailed around, leaving us to get the resulting translations into a format that we could use.
The solution
Back in 2014, we built our own XLIFF editor. The sole purpose of this was to take an XLIFF file from Xcode, convert it into a basic form for entering the translations, and then to generate an updated XLIFF file that could be imported back into Xcode.
It was primarily built for our own internal use, but given that we hadn’t found a public tool to do this already, we decided to release it in case other people found it helpful.
The new problem
We don’t use the XLIFF editor at Brightec anymore. Not many of our current projects require heavy internationalisation, and we increasingly work with React Native, which doesn’t use the XLIFF file format. As a result, the tool doesn’t get much focus internally.
The XLIFF format is also used much more widely than just Xcode. We only implemented a small subset of the spec necessary to support iOS projects, which can lead to issues for people who have XLIFF files that are generated by other tools.
As a result, the XLIFF editor appears a bit dated and unreliable in its behaviour. It doesn’t embody the quality and professionalism reflective of a standard Brightec project.
The future
Going forward, we’ll deprecate and then remove the XLIFF editor. Starting today, there’s a banner warning users of the deprecation. From 1 June, the tool will be removed and the XLIFF subdomain will point to this blog post.
We're choosing not to make any specific recommendations for which tool you should use instead, since this will vary depending on your specific project context and needs. Examples of some options you could consider include:
We’re grateful to everyone who used the editor over the years, and we hope it made managing translations in iOS projects a little easier along the way. While it’s time for this particular tool to be retired, we’re glad it was able to help developers when they needed it.
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