Explain why this exists

[creativecreatorormaybenot]

flutter_sheet_localization seems to do what gsheet_to_arb does in a simpler manner. I realize that this project was created earlier.

It would be useful to know the advantages this package has.

[gocal]

Hi @creativecreatorormaybenot , as you pointed out this project has been created back in 2018, and until today, I was not even aware there's similar solution - flutter_sheet_localization.

flutter_sheet_localization converts csv-like table directly to a set of translations classes, and this plugin is based on the ARB files as a intermediate format. There're many advantages of such approach:

• ARB format is compatible with external translations platforms / apps so you can switch from gsheet to some proper 'industrial' tool.
• you can generate translations directly via intl_translation plugin which is one of the suggested i18n methods for Flutter
• you are not bound to custom translations output format (partial classes etc., nesting) so you can easily remove plugin integration at any time

Also there some other nice features

• use authenticated access - you may restrict access to the spreadsheet only to a specific user, that's why we need this complex auth setup - I should probably add option to allow unrestricted access in the future
• group keys by sections so you don't have to add prefixes for each key. For most of the mobile projects 2-level nesting is enough, and it plays really well with the ARB's context field.
• description column which explains each key
• plurals support - you don't have to use additional enum-to-int formatter for the plurals - it generates the method that is compatible the the ICU plural format.

I really like flutter_sheet_localization simpler approach and the fact you can have nested keys, still I find this plugin usefull in some scenarios described above.

[creativecreatorormaybenot]

@gocal Thank you for the elaborate explanation! 🚀

I feel like somethign similar to this would also be helpful in the README 👍🏼