Getting Started
Overview
The Okapi tools consist of four applications: Rainbow, CheckMate, Tikal and Ratel. They are all cross-platform, able to run on Windows, Linux and Macintosh. These tools are designed to help you in executing localization and translation tasks.
With Rainbow and Tikal you can:
- prepare files for translation and post-process them,
- convert file formats, encodings, line-breaks,
- extract terms, create translation memories,
- batch translate with translation memories and machine translation engines,
- and much more.
With CheckMate you can run different verifications between source and translated text, in bilingual translated files.
With Ratel you can create and edit segmentation rules in WYSIWYG mode.
Installing the Tools
Check the Requirements
Starting with release m24, to run the Okapi tools you must have Java 1.8 or later installed on your machine. You can use java 1.6 for releases before m24.
To check if Java is installed on you machine and if it is the proper version, go to a command-line prompt and type:
java -version
If the call fails or if the version is below 1.8, you need to install or update Java. You can find all the Java downloads here: http://www.java.com/. You can also check your installed version of Java from there.
Please Note: 64-bit operating systems will require both a 64-bit version of Java and the 64-bit version of Okapi.
Download the Distribution
The next step is to download the okapi-apps distribution for your platform.
All Okapi downloads are available here: http://bintray.com/okapi/Distribution or from the Main Page.
Install the Files
The installation consist basically in unzipping the downloaded file in a new directory.
For platform-specific installation details, see the release notes: http://okapiframework.org/readme.html.
Testing the Tools
C:\Program Files or other system directories) you should copy the examples somewhere else, or change the default output location (Other Settings tab).Trying Rainbow
One way to make sure everything works is to try running a simple process with Rainbow.
1. Start the Rainbow executable that is in your installation directory.
2. Select the Input List 1 tab.
3. Select Input > Add Documents. Go to the installation directory, and there go inside the sub-directory named examples. Select the file myFile.html.
Now you should have the file myFile.html listed in the input list and it should be associated with the filter configuration named okf_html.
4. Select Utilities > Text Rewriting. This should open a dialog box.
5. In the left-hand list of steps, select Text Modification. Then on the right-hand pane, in the list Type of change to perform, select Replace selected ASCII characters by extended characters.
6. Click Execute.
7. Go to the directory where myFile.html is located (the examples sub-directory of your installation directory). There you should now see a new file named myFile.out.html. It should be the same as myFile.html but with many accented characters instead of ASCII ones.
Building and Running the Examples
Another way to verify if the installation works fine is to run the examples included in the distribution:
1. Go to the examples sub-directory that is in the directory where you have installed Okapi.
2. There are a few examples of programs written with the Okapi libraries. They are pre-built, so you can run them directly:
- On Windows: Run
run_examples.bat - On Linux and Macintosh: Run
run_examples.sh
The examples should run without error, except possibly for the last one that tries to access the Open-Tran server, which, sometimes, may be down.
Where to Go from Here?
- The Rainbow help pages will help you start working with rainbow.
- You can look at the Knowledge Base to find how to perform some tasks.
- The "FAQ" page may answer some additional questions.
- You can find a complete list of the file format supported in the "Filters" page.
- To discover which TM and MT engines can be used look at the "Connectors" page.
- The "Steps" page will provide you with a list of some of the things you can do with the tools.