Optional properties of extensions

General properties

Description
A more detailed description of the extension than that provided for the Summary field. For example, you might list the major features available with the extension.
Date
An optional date for the current version of the extension. No formatting is provided.
Author
The author of the extension. You might want to include an email address.
Links
A set of URLs to associate with the extension; for example, the author's home page. The format of this field is arbitrary so be sure to delimit multiple URLs with spaces, commas, or some other reasonable delimiter.
Keywords
A set of keywords with which to associate the extension.
Platform
Information about any restrictions that apply to using the extension on particular operating system platforms.

Dependencies

Maximum SPSS Statistics Version
The maximum version of IBM® SPSS® Statistics on which the extension can be run.
Integration Plug-in for Python required
Specifies whether the Integration Plug-in for Python is required.
  • If the Python implementation code is specified to run in Python 3, then select Python 3 for the Python Version.

  • If the extension requires Python modules that are not explicitly included in the extension, then enter the names in the Required Python Modules control. Any such modules should be contributed to the IBM SPSS Predictive Analytics community ( https://www.ibm.com/community/spss-statistics ). To add the first module, click anywhere in the Required Python Modules control to highlight the entry field. Pressing Enter, with the cursor in a given row, will create a new row. You delete a row by selecting it and pressing Delete.

    The user of the extension is responsible for downloading any required Python modules and copying them to a location that is specified for extension commands, as shown in the output from the SHOW EXTPATHS command. Alternatively, the modules can be copied to a location on the Python search path, such as the Python site-packages directory.

Integration Plug-in for R required
Specifies whether the Integration Plug-in for R is required.

If the extension requires any R packages from the CRAN package repository, then enter the names of those packages in the Required R Packages control. Names are case sensitive. To add the first package, click anywhere in the Required R Packages control to highlight the entry field. Pressing Enter, with the cursor in a given row, will create a new row. You delete a row by selecting it and pressing Delete. When the extension is installed, IBM SPSS Statistics will check if the required R packages are installed and attempt to download and install any that are missing.

Required Extensions
Enter the names of any extensions that are required by the current extension. To add the first extension, click anywhere in the Required Extensions control to highlight the entry field. Pressing Enter, with the cursor in a particular row, creates a new row. You delete a row by selecting it and pressing Delete. The user of the extensions is responsible for installing any required extensions.
Note: There is no option for specifying the Integration Plug-in for Java™ because it is always installed with IBM SPSS Statistics.

Localization

Custom Dialogs
You can add translated versions of the properties file (specifies all strings that appear in the dialog) for a custom dialog within the extension. To add translations for a particular dialog, select the dialog, click Add Translations, and select the folder that contains the translated versions. All translated files for a particular dialog must be in the same folder. For instructions on creating the translation files, see the topic Creating Localized Versions of Custom Dialogs.
Translation Catalogues Folder
You can include a folder containing translation catalogues. This allows you to provide localized messages and localized output from Python or R programs that implement an extension command included in the extension. You can also provide localized versions of the Summary and Description fields for the extension that are displayed when end users view the extension details from the Extension Hub. The set of all localized files for an extension must be in a folder named lang. Browse to the lang folder that contains the localized files and select that folder.

For information on localizing output from Python and R programs, see the topics on the Integration Plug-in for Python and the Integration Plug-in for R, in the Help system.

To provide localized versions of the Summary and Description fields, create a file named <extension name>_<language-identifier>.properties for each language for which a translation is being provided. At run time, if the .properties file for the current user interface language cannot be found, the values of the Summary and Description fields that are specified on the Required and Optional tabs are used.
  • <extension name> is the value of the Name field for the extension, with any spaces replaced by underscore characters.
  • <language-identifier> is the identifier for a particular language. Identifiers for the languages that are supported by IBM SPSS Statistics are shown in what follows.

For example, the French translations for an extension named MYORG MYSTAT are stored in the file MYORG_MYSTAT_fr.properties.

The .properties file must contain the following two lines, which specify the localized text for the two fields:

Summary=<localized text for Summary field>
Description=<localized text for Description field>
  • The keywords Summary and Description must be in English and the localized text must be on the same line as the keyword, and with no line breaks.
  • The file must be in ISO 8859-1 encoding. Characters that cannot be directly represented in this encoding must be written with Unicode escapes ("\u").

The lang folder that contains the localized files must have a subfolder named <language-identifier> that contains the localized .properties file for a particular language. For example, the French .properties file must be in the lang/fr folder.

Language Identifiers

de. German

en. English

es. Spanish

fr. French

it. Italian

ja. Japanese

ko. Korean

pl. Polish

pt_BR. Brazilian Portuguese

ru. Russian

zh_CN. Simplified Chinese

zh_TW. Traditional Chinese