Minecraft Language File GUI Editor

A VS Code extension that gives Minecraft (datapack / resourcepack / mod) language files a friendly multi-language GUI editor. The editor is registered as a native custom editor ("Open With…") — it never intercepts normal file opening; open it explicitly when you want it. New / deleted / renamed translation keys are applied to every sibling language file at once, with undo/redo.

English · 简体中文

Highlights

• Side-by-side grid: rows = translation keys, columns = sibling language files (en_us.json, zh_cn.json, ja_jp.json, …). Click any cell to edit; empty cells are marked as missing.
• Registered as an editor (Open With…): opening a language file always keeps VS Code's default JSON editor — nothing is intercepted. Pick the GUI explicitly whenever you want it.
• Language chips toggle columns and show per-language completion (e.g. en_us 42/50).
• Detail panel (click a row): compares the key across all languages with multi-line inputs; the key itself is editable right there (rename syncs to every language file, Enter commits / Esc reverts). The panel can be docked at the bottom, left or right, or maximized fullscreen (drag the divider to resize; choice is remembered). A→U / U→A buttons encode/decode Unicode escapes (\u00a7, CJK → \uXXXX) in the focused/current translation — ASCII letters and symbols are kept untouched.
• Row navigation: inside the detail panel use Ctrl+↑/Ctrl+↓ (or the ↑/↓ buttons) to jump between the previous/next entries of the current list; Ctrl+Shift+G jumps straight to a specific translation key.
• Right-click a table row opens a stable in-app menu (copy key / translation / entry, delete); inside a text editor it offers cut / copy / paste / select-all (paste reads the system clipboard through the host). No focus loss or menu flicker.
• Add / delete / rename keys across all files at once — undoable. “＋ Add” opens the detail panel as a draft: type the new key and press Enter (key/value editing continues in the same place, in all languages).
• Undo / Redo: toolbar buttons and Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y / Ctrl+Shift+Z (100-step in-session stack; every edit auto-saves).
• Filter (keys or any translation text), only-missing toggle, column sorting (click the key header for alphabetical order, click a language header to sort by its translations; click again to reverse).
• Resizable columns: drag a column header edge to change its width; double-click it to auto-fit that column to its longest visible text (wide grids scroll horizontally).
• Code completion: key fields suggest existing keys (annotated with missing languages) and common Minecraft key prefixes; value fields suggest %s / %d / %1$s placeholders used by the other languages for that key.
• Follows VS Code editor settings & theme: editing text uses editor.fontSize / editor.fontFamily (live, row height adapts); dedicated overrides (minecraftLanguageEditor.fontSize / fontFamily) apply when set, otherwise it follows the code editor. Colors come from the active theme's CSS variables (editor, selection, completion popup, …); keys and %s placeholders get code-token coloring that follows theme switches. UI text follows VS Code's display language (中文 / English) with compact labels.
• Placeholder check: a ⚠ warning is shown when %s / %d / %1$s tokens disagree across languages for one key.
• Empty / broken file friendly: empty or blank language files are treated as editable files with no translations yet; files that fail to parse or cannot even be read are isolated — reported as a banner, never rewritten, and they never block opening/editing the other files in the folder.
• Format preservation: on write, each file keeps its original key order, indentation (spaces or tabs), trailing newline and BOM; new keys are appended at the end (diff-friendly).

How to open the GUI (opt-in)

1. Explorer right-click a .json file → Minecraft Language File: Open with GUI Editor.
2. Open With… / Reopen With… → Minecraft 语言文件编辑器 (GUI).
3. Command Palette → Minecraft Language File: Open with GUI Editor (activates the file in the active editor, if any).

To make the GUI the default for certain files, add an entry under workbench.editorAssociations:

"workbench.editorAssociations": {
  "**/lang/en_us.json": "minecraftLanguageEditor.gridEditor",
  "**/lang/zh_cn.json": "minecraftLanguageEditor.gridEditor"
}

Language files must use the Minecraft-style lowercase xx[_xx].json name and contain a flat string map ({ "key": "translation" }) — the standard language-file format.

Keyboard shortcuts

The new-key shortcut only reacts while focus is in the grid or the key field — never while typing inside a translation editor.

Settings (minecraftLanguageEditor.*)

How it works

The folder of the opened file is treated as one "language set": every xx_xx.json becomes a column. The extension host owns the merged model and the undo stack; the webview is just a view. Every edit is written through VS Code's text-editing API and auto-saved, so hot-exit and on-disk conflict handling stay native. Undo/redo restores full snapshots of the affected files, so cross-file operations revert exactly.

Known limitations

• Undo history lives in the current session only (edits are auto-saved to disk, nothing is lost on restart; tabs are restored natively and rebuilt from disk).
• Simultaneous edits by other tools are last-writer-wins; external changes are detected and trigger a reload.
• Old .lang (properties) files are out of scope — JSON only.

For developers

• Pure logic: src/detection.js, src/langSet.js (standalone unit-testable).
• Model / persistence / undo: src/model.js; custom editor wiring: src/panel.js.
• Webview GUI: media/editor.{html,css,js}.
• Tests: npm test (mocha in the extension host; npx mocha test/extension.test.js for a fast pure-logic run).

License

MIT