DISCLAIMER: i am in no way responsible for any messing up of addons in your interface folder. remember to make a backup of the relevant files if you wish to continue. also, keep in mind that i'm not the author of rankwatch. the author may or may not support this editing.

Rankwatch is an addon that whispers other players when they use a lower rank of one of their spells. this whisper, however, is sometimes not very clear. this guide is intended to explain how to easily edit the whisper the addon sends.

navigate to your world of warcraft folder. this may differ from installation to installation. easiest way to find it is by right-clicking on the world of warcraft icon on your desktop and selecting the "open file location" option (or something that looks like that. i use a non-english version of windows).

after that, open the interface folder. open the Addons folder. then, find the folder labeled "Rankwatch". inside that folder, there should be 2 folders and 8 files. ignore the files for now and open the Locales folder.

inside, you will find a number of LUA files. these files are named: "Locale-[language]". if you are using the English WoW client, you should open Locale-enUS.lua. other languages should use the corresponding file. you can open the file with any text editor, but notepad is the easiest. in the next few paragraphs, i will use the en-US file for explanation.

!!!!IMPORTANT!!!!
make a backup of the localised file before you continue. any mistake you make can break the addon. simply copy the file to another folder.
!!!!END IMPORTANT!!!!

inside the file you should see a lot of text. don't worry. this kind of sorts itself out. the bit of text below is what is important to us.

Code:
L["About"] = true
L["Version"] = true 
L["__URL__"] = "http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...ankwatch.aspx"
L["LOCAL_SPELL_LOW"] = "RankWatch saw %s use %s Rank %d (max rank at level %d is %d) at %s."
L["LOCAL_SPELL_REPLACED"] = "RankWatch saw %s use %s Rank %d (replaced at level %d by %s Rank %d) at %s."
L["DATE_FORMAT"] = "%m/%d/%y %H:%M:%S"
L["WHISPER_SPELL_LOW_WARNING"] = "[RankWatch] %s used %s Rank %d. Max rank at level %d is %d."
L["WHISPER_SPELL_REPLACED_WARNING"] = "[RankWatch] %s used %s Rank %d, which is replaced at level %d by %s Rank %d."
L["WHISPER_BOILERPLATE_PART1"] = "If you trained %s rank %d, make sure it's on your bars - there's a bug if you train while dual-specced, it does not update your other spec's bars."
L["WHISPER_BOILERPLATE_PART2"] = "If you did intend to use a downranked spell, my apologies - tell me, and I will make RankWatch never send you a message again."
you see that line L["WHISPER_SPELL_LOW_WARNING"]? after that, there is the text the addon sends.

!!!!IMPORTANT!!!!
don't change the words that start with the % sign. these words are variables and change depending on the player, the spell and the used rank. don't mess with these. if you change these without changing the adequate lines in the rankwatch.lua file in the root rankwatch folder, you run a severe risk of breaking the addon.
!!!!END IMPORTANT!!!!

now, you can change this line to whatever you like, as long as you keep the format the same. that means no changing of the order of variables, nor of the format (%s is a string, which essentially means a word or multiple words. %d is an integer, or essentially a number.). after this, i include the changes i made:

Code:
L["About"] = true
L["Version"] = true 
L["__URL__"] = "http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...ankwatch.aspx"
L["LOCAL_SPELL_LOW"] = "RankWatch saw %s use %s Rank %d (max rank at level %d is %d) at %s."
L["LOCAL_SPELL_REPLACED"] = "RankWatch saw %s use %s Rank %d (replaced at level %d by %s Rank %d) at %s."
L["DATE_FORMAT"] = "%m/%d/%y %H:%M:%S"
L["WHISPER_SPELL_LOW_WARNING"] = "[RankWatch] %s, you used %s Rank %d. This is not the max rank of that spell available at your level. Max rank at level %d is %d."
L["WHISPER_SPELL_REPLACED_WARNING"] = "[RankWatch] %s used %s Rank %d, which is replaced at level %d by %s Rank %d."
L["WHISPER_BOILERPLATE_PART1"] = "If you trained %s rank %d, make sure it's on your bars - there's a bug if you train while dual-specced, it does not update your other spec's bars."
L["WHISPER_BOILERPLATE_PART2"] = "If you did intend to use a downranked spell, my apologies - tell me, and I will make RankWatch never send you a message again."
as you can see, i did not change the order or format of the %s or %d variables in the line. normally, with these modifications, your Rankwatch messages should be a bit more clear. save the file and close the file browser.

if you feel a bit adventurous, you could take your chances with with this editing and edit the Rankwatch.lua file in the Rankwatch root folder. however, be careful, since any mistake in formatting in that file, or any forgotten edits may prove costly. also, this also requires you to edit all the other Locale files as well. this is well beyond the scope of this simple tutorial.

edit: for the sake of completion, these are the variables the Rankwatch.lua sends to this message:

Code:
string.format(L["WHISPER_SPELL_LOW_WARNING"], sourceName, spellName, lowRank, spellLevel, maxRank)
sourceName is the caster of the spell, spellName is the name of the downranked spell, lowRank is the rank the caster is using, spellLevel is the level at which the max rank of the spell is available and maxRank is the max rank of the spell for the level of the caster.