gettext utilitiesNext: Introduction, Up: (dir) [Contents][Index]
gettext utilitiesThis manual documents the GNU gettext tools and the GNU libintl library, version 0.22.
gettext declarationgettext Operationsgettext Installationmsgcat Program
msgconv Program
msggrep Program
msgfilter Program
msguniq Program
msgcomm Program
msgcmp Program
msgattrib Program
msgen Program
msgexec Program
msgfmt Program
msgunfmt Program
gettextize Programgettext.shgettext programngettext programenvsubst programeval_gettext functioneval_ngettext functioneval_pgettext functioneval_npgettext function
Next: The User’s View, Previous: GNU gettext utilities, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
This chapter explains the goals sought in the creation
of GNU gettext and the free Translation Project.
Then, it explains a few broad concepts around
Native Language Support, and positions message translation with regard
to other aspects of national and cultural variance, as they apply
to programs. It also surveys those files used to convey the
translations. It explains how the various tools interact in the
initial generation of these files, and later, how the maintenance
cycle should usually operate.
In this manual, we use he when speaking of the programmer or
maintainer, she when speaking of the translator, and they
when speaking of the installers or end users of the translated program.
This is only a convenience for clarifying the documentation. It is
absolutely not meant to imply that some roles are more appropriate
to males or females. Besides, as you might guess, GNU gettext
is meant to be useful for people using computers, whatever their sex,
race, religion or nationality!
Please submit suggestions and corrections
bug-gettext@gnu.org.
Please include the manual’s edition number and update date in your messages.
gettextgettextNext: I18n, L10n, and Such, Up: Introduction [Contents][Index]
gettextUsually, programs are written and documented in English, and use English at execution time to interact with users. This is true not only of GNU software, but also of a great deal of proprietary and free software. Using a common language is quite handy for communication between developers, maintainers and users from all countries. On the other hand, most people are less comfortable with English than with their own native language, and would prefer to use their mother tongue for day to day’s work, as far as possible. Many would simply love to see their computer screen showing a lot less of English, and far more of their own language.
However, to many people, this dream might appear so far fetched that they may believe it is not even worth spending time thinking about it. They have no confidence at all that the dream might ever become true. Yet some have not lost hope, and have organized themselves. The Translation Project is a formalization of this hope into a workable structure, which has a good chance to get all of us nearer the achievement of a truly multi-lingual set of programs.
GNU gettext is an important step for the Translation Project,
as it is an asset on which we may build many other steps. This package
offers to programmers, translators and even users, a well integrated
set of tools and documentation. Specifically, the GNU gettext
utilities are a set of tools that provides a framework within which
other free packages may produce multi-lingual messages. These tools
include
GNU gettext is designed to minimize the impact of
internationalization on program sources, keeping this impact as small
and hardly noticeable as possible. Internationalization has better
chances of succeeding if it is very light weighted, or at least,
appear to be so, when looking at program sources.
The Translation Project also uses the GNU gettext distribution
as a vehicle for documenting its structure and methods. This goes
beyond the strict technicalities of documenting the GNU gettext
proper. By so doing, translators will find in a single place, as
far as possible, all they need to know for properly doing their
translating work. Also, this supplemental documentation might also
help programmers, and even curious users, in understanding how GNU
gettext is related to the remainder of the Translation
Project, and consequently, have a glimpse at the big picture.
Next: Aspects in Native Language Support, Previous: The Purpose of GNU gettext, Up: Introduction [Contents][Index]
Two long words appear all the time when we discuss support of native language in programs, and these words have a precise meaning, worth being explained here, once and for all in this document. The words are internationalization and localization. Many people, tired of writing these long words over and over again, took the habit of writing i18n and l10n instead, quoting the first and last letter of each word, and replacing the run of intermediate letters by a number merely telling how many such letters there are. But in this manual, in the sake of clarity, we will patiently write the names in full, each time…
By internationalization, one refers to the operation by which a
program, or a set of programs turned into a package, is made aware of and
able to support multiple languages. This is a generalization process,
by which the programs are untied from calling only English strings or
other English specific habits, and connected to generic ways of doing
the same, instead. Program developers may use various techniques to
internationalize their programs. Some of these have been standardized.
GNU gettext offers one of these standards. See The Programmer’s View.
By localization, one means the operation by which, in a set of programs already internationalized, one gives the program all needed information so that it can adapt itself to handle its input and output in a fashion which is correct for some native language and cultural habits. This is a particularisation process, by which generic methods already implemented in an internationalized program are used in specific ways. The programming environment puts several functions to the programmers disposal which allow this runtime configuration. The formal description of specific set of cultural habits for some country, together with all associated translations targeted to the same native language, is called the locale for this language or country. Users achieve localization of programs by setting proper values to special environment variables, prior to executing those programs, identifying which locale should be used.
In fact, locale message support is only one component of the cultural data that makes up a particular locale. There are a whole host of routines and functions provided to aid programmers in developing internationalized software and which allow them to access the data stored in a particular locale. When someone presently refers to a particular locale, they are obviously referring to the data stored within that particular locale. Similarly, if a programmer is referring to “accessing the locale routines”, they are referring to the complete suite of routines that access all of the locale’s information.
One uses the expression Native Language Support, or merely NLS, for speaking of the overall activity or feature encompassing both internationalization and localization, allowing for multi-lingual interactions in a program. In a nutshell, one could say that internationalization is the operation by which further localizations are made possible.
Also, very roughly said, when it comes to multi-lingual messages, internationalization is usually taken care of by programmers, and localization is usually taken care of by translators.
Next: Files Conveying Translations, Previous: I18n, L10n, and Such, Up: Introduction [Contents][Index]
For a totally multi-lingual distribution, there are many things to translate beyond output messages.
gettext offers a complete toolset for
translating messages output by C programs. Perl scripts and shell
scripts will also need to be translated. Even if there are today some hooks
by which this can be done, these hooks are not integrated as well as they
should be.
autoconf or bison, are able
to produce other programs (or scripts). Even if the generating
programs themselves are internationalized, the generated programs they
produce may need internationalization on their own, and this indirect
internationalization could be automated right from the generating
program. In fact, quite usually, generating and generated programs
could be internationalized independently, as the effort needed is
fairly orthogonal.
recode program is able to reconstruct at execution.
Since these descriptions are extracted from the RFC by mechanical means,
translating them properly would require a prior translation of the RFC
itself.
gcc to allow diacriticized characters in identifiers or use
translated keywords; ‘rm -i’ might accept something else than
‘y’ or ‘n’ for replies, etc. Even if the program will
eventually make most of its output in the foreign languages, one has
to decide whether the input syntax, option values, etc., are to be
localized or not.
As we already stressed, translation is only one aspect of locales.
Other internationalization aspects are system services and are handled
in GNU libc. There
are many attributes that are needed to define a country’s cultural
conventions. These attributes include beside the country’s native
language, the formatting of the date and time, the representation of
numbers, the symbols for currency, etc. These local rules are
termed the country’s locale. The locale represents the knowledge
needed to support the country’s native attributes.
There are a few major areas which may vary between countries and
hence, define what a locale must describe. The following list helps
putting multi-lingual messages into the proper context of other tasks
related to locales. See the GNU libc manual for details.
The codeset most commonly used through out the USA and most English speaking parts of the world is the ASCII codeset. However, there are many characters needed by various locales that are not found within this codeset. The 8-bit ISO 8859-1 code set has most of the special characters needed to handle the major European languages. However, in many cases, choosing ISO 8859-1 is nevertheless not adequate: it doesn’t even handle the major European currency. Hence each locale will need to specify which codeset they need to use and will need to have the appropriate character handling routines to cope with the codeset.
The symbols used vary from country to country as does the position used by the symbol. Software needs to be able to transparently display currency figures in the native mode for each locale.
The format of date varies between locales. For example, Christmas day in 1994 is written as 12/25/94 in the USA and as 25/12/94 in Australia. Other countries might use ISO 8601 dates, etc.
Time of the day may be noted as hh:mm, hh.mm, or otherwise. Some locales require time to be specified in 24-hour mode rather than as AM or PM. Further, the nature and yearly extent of the Daylight Saving correction vary widely between countries.
Numbers can be represented differently in different locales. For example, the following numbers are all written correctly for their respective locales:
12,345.67 English 12.345,67 German 12345,67 French 1,2345.67 Asia
Some programs could go further and use different unit systems, like English units or Metric units, or even take into account variants about how numbers are spelled in full.
The most obvious area is the language support within a locale. This is
where GNU gettext provides the means for developers and users to
easily change the language that the software uses to communicate to
the user.
These areas of cultural conventions are called locale categories. It is an unfortunate term; locale aspects or locale feature categories would be a better term, because each “locale category” describes an area or task that requires localization. The concrete data that describes the cultural conventions for such an area and for a particular culture is also called a locale category. In this sense, a locale is composed of several locale categories: the locale category describing the codeset, the locale category describing the formatting of numbers, the locale category containing the translated messages, and so on.
Components of locale outside of message handling are standardized in
the ISO C standard and the POSIX:2001 standard (also known as the SUSV3
specification). GNU libc
fully implements this, and most other modern systems provide a more
or less reasonable support for at least some of the missing components.
Next: Overview of GNU gettext, Previous: Aspects in Native Language Support, Up: Introduction [Contents][Index]
The letters PO in .po files means Portable Object, to distinguish it from .mo files, where MO stands for Machine Object. This paradigm, as well as the PO file format, is inspired by the NLS standard developed by Uniforum, and first implemented by Sun in their Solaris system.
PO files are meant to be read and edited by humans, and associate each
original, translatable string of a given package with its translation
in a particular target language. A single PO file is dedicated to
a single target language. If a package supports many languages,
there is one such PO file per language supported, and each package
has its own set of PO files. These PO files are best created by
the xgettext program, and later updated or refreshed through
the msgmerge program. Program xgettext extracts all
marked messages from a set of C files and initializes a PO file with
empty translations. Program msgmerge takes care of adjusting
PO files between releases of the corresponding sources, commenting
obsolete entries, initializing new ones, and updating all source
line references. Files ending with .pot are kind of base
translation files found in distributions, in PO file format.
MO files are meant to be read by programs, and are binary in nature.
A few systems already offer tools for creating and handling MO files
as part of the Native Language Support coming with the system, but the
format of these MO files is often different from system to system,
and non-portable. The tools already provided with these systems don’t
support all the features of GNU gettext. Therefore GNU
gettext uses its own format for MO files. Files ending with
.gmo are really MO files, when it is known that these files use
the GNU format.
Previous: Files Conveying Translations, Up: Introduction [Contents][Index]
gettextThe following diagram summarizes the relation between the files
handled by GNU gettext and the tools acting on these files.
It is followed by somewhat detailed explanations, which you should
read while keeping an eye on the diagram. Having a clear understanding
of these interrelations will surely help programmers, translators
and maintainers.
Original C Sources ───> Preparation ───> Marked C Sources ───╮
│
â•â”€â”€â”€â”€â”€â”€â”€â”€â”€<─── GNU gettext Library │
â•â”€â”€â”€ make <───┤ │
│ ╰─────────<────────────────────┬───────────────╯
│ │
│ â•â”€â”€â”€â”€â”€<─── PACKAGE.pot <─── xgettext <───╯ â•â”€â”€â”€<─── PO Compendium
│ │ │ ↑
│ │ ╰───╮ │
│ ╰───╮ ├───> PO editor ───╮
│ ├────> msgmerge ──────> LANG.po ────>────────╯ │
│ â•â”€â”€â”€â•¯ │
│ │ │
│ ╰─────────────<───────────────╮ │
│ ├─── New LANG.po <────────────────────╯
│ â•â”€â”€â”€ LANG.gmo <─── msgfmt <───╯
│ │
│ ╰───> install ───> /.../LANG/PACKAGE.mo ───╮
│ ├───> "Hello world!"
╰───────> install ───> /.../bin/PROGRAM ───────╯
As a programmer, the first step to bringing GNU gettext
into your package is identifying, right in the C sources, those strings
which are meant to be translatable, and those which are untranslatable.
This tedious job can be done a little more comfortably using emacs PO
mode, but you can use any means familiar to you for modifying your
C sources. Beside this some other simple, standard changes are needed to
properly initialize the translation library. See Preparing Program Sources, for
more information about all this.
For newly written software the strings of course can and should be
marked while writing it. The gettext approach makes this
very easy. Simply put the following lines at the beginning of each file
or in a central header file:
#define _(String) (String) #define N_(String) String #define textdomain(Domain) #define bindtextdomain(Package, Directory)
Doing this allows you to prepare the sources for internationalization.
Later when you feel ready for the step to use the gettext library
simply replace these definitions by the following:
#include <libintl.h> #define _(String) gettext (String) #define gettext_noop(String) String #define N_(String) gettext_noop (String)
and link against libintl.a or libintl.so. Note that on
GNU systems, you don’t need to link with libintl because the
gettext library functions are already contained in GNU libc.
That is all you have to change.
Once the C sources have been modified, the xgettext program
is used to find and extract all translatable strings, and create a
PO template file out of all these. This package.pot file
contains all original program strings. It has sets of pointers to
exactly where in C sources each string is used. All translations
are set to empty. The letter t in .pot marks this as
a Template PO file, not yet oriented towards any particular language.
See Invoking the xgettext Program, for more details about how one calls the
xgettext program. If you are really lazy, you might
be interested at working a lot more right away, and preparing the
whole distribution setup (see The Maintainer’s View). By doing so, you
spare yourself typing the xgettext command, as make
should now generate the proper things automatically for you!
The first time through, there is no lang.po yet, so the
msgmerge step may be skipped and replaced by a mere copy of
package.pot to lang.po, where lang
represents the target language. See Creating a New PO File for details.
Then comes the initial translation of messages. Translation in itself is a whole matter, still exclusively meant for humans, and whose complexity far overwhelms the level of this manual. Nevertheless, a few hints are given in some other chapter of this manual (see The Translator’s View). You will also find there indications about how to contact translating teams, or becoming part of them, for sharing your translating concerns with others who target the same native language.
While adding the translated messages into the lang.po PO file, if you are not using one of the dedicated PO file editors (see Editing PO Files), you are on your own for ensuring that your efforts fully respect the PO file format, and quoting conventions (see The Format of PO Files). This is surely not an impossible task, as this is the way many people have handled PO files around 1995. On the other hand, by using a PO file editor, most details of PO file format are taken care of for you, but you have to acquire some familiarity with PO file editor itself.
If some common translations have already been saved into a compendium PO file, translators may use PO mode for initializing untranslated entries from the compendium, and also save selected translations into the compendium, updating it (see Using Translation Compendia). Compendium files are meant to be exchanged between members of a given translation team.
Programs, or packages of programs, are dynamic in nature: users write bug reports and suggestion for improvements, maintainers react by modifying programs in various ways. The fact that a package has already been internationalized should not make maintainers shy of adding new strings, or modifying strings already translated. They just do their job the best they can. For the Translation Project to work smoothly, it is important that maintainers do not carry translation concerns on their already loaded shoulders, and that translators be kept as free as possible of programming concerns.
The only concern maintainers should have is carefully marking new
strings as translatable, when they should be, and do not otherwise
worry about them being translated, as this will come in proper time.
Consequently, when programs and their strings are adjusted in various
ways by maintainers, and for matters usually unrelated to translation,
xgettext would construct package.pot files which are
evolving over time, so the translations carried by lang.po
are slowly fading out of date.
It is important for translators (and even maintainers) to understand that package translation is a continuous process in the lifetime of a package, and not something which is done once and for all at the start. After an initial burst of translation activity for a given package, interventions are needed once in a while, because here and there, translated entries become obsolete, and new untranslated entries appear, needing translation.
The msgmerge program has the purpose of refreshing an already
existing lang.po file, by comparing it with a newer
package.pot template file, extracted by xgettext
out of recent C sources. The refreshing operation adjusts all
references to C source locations for strings, since these strings
move as programs are modified. Also, msgmerge comments out as
obsolete, in lang.po, those already translated entries
which are no longer used in the program sources (see Obsolete Entries). It finally discovers new strings and inserts them in
the resulting PO file as untranslated entries (see Untranslated Entries). See Invoking the msgmerge Program, for more information about what
msgmerge really does.
Whatever route or means taken, the goal is to obtain an updated lang.po file offering translations for all strings.
The temporal mobility, or fluidity of PO files, is an integral part of the translation game, and should be well understood, and accepted. People resisting it will have a hard time participating in the Translation Project, or will give a hard time to other participants! In particular, maintainers should relax and include all available official PO files in their distributions, even if these have not recently been updated, without exerting pressure on the translator teams to get the job done. The pressure should rather come from the community of users speaking a particular language, and maintainers should consider themselves fairly relieved of any concern about the adequacy of translation files. On the other hand, translators should reasonably try updating the PO files they are responsible for, while the package is undergoing pretest, prior to an official distribution.
Once the PO file is complete and dependable, the msgfmt program
is used for turning the PO file into a machine-oriented format, which
may yield efficient retrieval of translations by the programs of the
package, whenever needed at runtime (see The Format of GNU MO Files). See Invoking the msgfmt Program, for more information about all modes of execution
for the msgfmt program.
Finally, the modified and marked C sources are compiled and linked
with the GNU gettext library, usually through the operation of
make, given a suitable Makefile exists for the project,
and the resulting executable is installed somewhere users will find it.
The MO files themselves should also be properly installed. Given the
appropriate environment variables are set (see Setting the Locale through Environment Variables),
the program should localize itself automatically, whenever it executes.
The remainder of this manual has the purpose of explaining in depth the various steps outlined above.
Next: The Format of PO Files, Previous: Introduction, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
Nowadays, when users log into a computer, they usually find that all their programs show messages in their native language – at least for users of languages with an active free software community, like French or German; to a lesser extent for languages with a smaller participation in free software and the GNU project, like Hindi and Filipino.
How does this work? How can the user influence the language that is used by the programs? This chapter will answer it.
Next: Setting the Locale Used by GUI Programs, Up: The User’s View [Contents][Index]
The default language is often already specified during operating system installation. When the operating system is installed, the installer typically asks for the language used for the installation process and, separately, for the language to use in the installed system. Some OS installers only ask for the language once.
This determines the system-wide default language for all users. But the installers often give the possibility to install extra localizations for additional languages. For example, the localizations of KDE (the K Desktop Environment) and LibreOffice are often bundled separately, as one installable package per language.
At this point it is good to consider the intended use of the machine: If it is a machine designated for personal use, additional localizations are probably not necessary. If, however, the machine is in use in an organization or company that has international relationships, one can consider the needs of guest users. If you have a guest from abroad, for a week, what could be his preferred locales? It may be worth installing these additional localizations ahead of time, since they cost only a bit of disk space at this point.
The system-wide default language is the locale configuration that is used when a new user account is created. But the user can have his own locale configuration that is different from the one of the other users of the same machine. He can specify it, typically after the first login, as described in the next section.
Next: Setting the Locale through Environment Variables, Previous: Operating System Installation, Up: The User’s View [Contents][Index]
The immediately available programs in a user’s desktop come from a group of programs called a “desktop environment”; it usually includes the window manager, a web browser, a text editor, and more. The most common free desktop environments are KDE, GNOME, and Xfce.
The locale used by GUI programs of the desktop environment can be specified in a configuration screen called “control center”, “language settings” or “country settings”.
Individual GUI programs that are not part of the desktop environment can have their locale specified either in a settings panel, or through environment variables.
For some programs, it is possible to specify the locale through environment
variables, possibly even to a different locale than the desktop’s locale.
This means, instead of starting a program through a menu or from the file
system, you can start it from the command-line, after having set some
environment variables. The environment variables can be those specified
in the next section (Setting the Locale through Environment Variables); for some versions of
KDE, however, the locale is specified through a variable KDE_LANG,
rather than LANG or LC_ALL.
Next: Obtaining good output in a Windows console, Previous: Setting the Locale Used by GUI Programs, Up: The User’s View [Contents][Index]
As a user, if your language has been installed for this package, in the
simplest case, you only have to set the LANG environment variable
to the appropriate ‘ll_CC’ combination. For example,
let’s suppose that you speak German and live in Germany. At the shell
prompt, merely execute
‘setenv LANG de_DE’ (in csh),
‘export LANG; LANG=de_DE’ (in sh) or
‘export LANG=de_DE’ (in bash). This can be done from your
.login or .profile file, once and for all.
Next: Locale Environment Variables, Up: Setting the Locale through Environment Variables [Contents][Index]
A locale name usually has the form ‘ll_CC’. Here
‘ll’ is an ISO 639 two-letter language code, and
‘CC’ is an ISO 3166 two-letter country code. For example,
for German in Germany, ll is de, and CC is DE.
You find a list of the language codes in appendix Language Codes and
a list of the country codes in appendix Country Codes.
You might think that the country code specification is redundant. But in fact, some languages have dialects in different countries. For example, ‘de_AT’ is used for Austria, and ‘pt_BR’ for Brazil. The country code serves to distinguish the dialects.
Many locale names have an extended syntax ‘ll_CC.encoding’ that also specifies the character encoding. These are in use because between 2000 and 2005, most users have switched to locales in UTF-8 encoding. For example, the German locale on glibc systems is nowadays ‘de_DE.UTF-8’. The older name ‘de_DE’ still refers to the German locale as of 2000 that stores characters in ISO-8859-1 encoding – a text encoding that cannot even accommodate the Euro currency sign.
Some locale names use ‘ll_CC@variant’ instead of ‘ll_CC’. The ‘@variant’ can denote any kind of characteristics that is not already implied by the language ll and the country CC. It can denote a particular monetary unit. For example, on glibc systems, ‘de_DE@euro’ denotes the locale that uses the Euro currency, in contrast to the older locale ‘de_DE’ which implies the use of the currency before 2002. It can also denote a dialect of the language, or the script used to write text (for example, ‘sr_RS@latin’ uses the Latin script, whereas ‘sr_RS’ uses the Cyrillic script to write Serbian), or the orthography rules, or similar.
On other systems, some variations of this scheme are used, such as ‘ll’. You can get the list of locales supported by your system for your language by running the command ‘locale -a | grep '^ll'’.
There is also a special locale, called ‘C’. When it is used, it disables all localization: in this locale, all programs standardized by POSIX use English messages and an unspecified character encoding (often US-ASCII, but sometimes also ISO-8859-1 or UTF-8, depending on the operating system).
Next: Specifying a Priority List of Languages, Previous: Locale Names, Up: Setting the Locale through Environment Variables [Contents][Index]
A locale is composed of several locale categories, see Aspects in Native Language Support. When a program looks up locale dependent values, it does this according to the following environment variables, in priority order:
LANGUAGE
LC_ALL
LC_xxx, according to selected locale category:
LC_CTYPE, LC_NUMERIC, LC_TIME, LC_COLLATE,
LC_MONETARY, LC_MESSAGES, ...
LANG
Variables whose value is set but is empty are ignored in this lookup.
LANG is the normal environment variable for specifying a locale.
As a user, you normally set this variable (unless some of the other variables
have already been set by the system, in /etc/profile or similar
initialization files).
LC_CTYPE, LC_NUMERIC, LC_TIME, LC_COLLATE,
LC_MONETARY, LC_MESSAGES, and so on, are the environment
variables meant to override LANG and affecting a single locale
category only. For example, assume you are a Swedish user in Spain, and you
want your programs to handle numbers and dates according to Spanish
conventions, and only the messages should be in Swedish. Then you could
create a locale named ‘sv_ES’ or ‘sv_ES.UTF-8’ by use of the
localedef program. But it is simpler, and achieves the same effect,
to set the LANG variable to es_ES.UTF-8 and the
LC_MESSAGES variable to sv_SE.UTF-8; these two locales come
already preinstalled with the operating system.
LC_ALL is an environment variable that overrides all of these.
It is typically used in scripts that run particular programs. For example,
configure scripts generated by GNU autoconf use LC_ALL to make
sure that the configuration tests don’t operate in locale dependent ways.
Some systems, unfortunately, set LC_ALL in /etc/profile or in
similar initialization files. As a user, you therefore have to unset this
variable if you want to set LANG and optionally some of the other
LC_xxx variables.
The LANGUAGE variable is described in the next subsection.
Previous: Locale Environment Variables, Up: Setting the Locale through Environment Variables [Contents][Index]
Not all programs have translations for all languages. By default, an
English message is shown in place of a nonexistent translation. If you
understand other languages, you can set up a priority list of languages.
This is done through a different environment variable, called
LANGUAGE. GNU gettext gives preference to LANGUAGE
over LC_ALL and LANG for the purpose of message handling,
but you still need to have LANG (or LC_ALL) set to the primary
language; this is required by other parts of the system libraries.
For example, some Swedish users who would rather read translations in
German than English for when Swedish is not available, set LANGUAGE
to ‘sv:de’ while leaving LANG to ‘sv_SE’.
Special advice for Norwegian users: The language code for Norwegian
bokmål changed from ‘no’ to ‘nb’ recently (in 2003).
During the transition period, while some message catalogs for this language
are installed under ‘nb’ and some older ones under ‘no’, it is
recommended for Norwegian users to set LANGUAGE to ‘nb:no’ so that
both newer and older translations are used.
In the LANGUAGE environment variable, but not in the other
environment variables, ‘ll_CC’ combinations can be
abbreviated as ‘ll’ to denote the language’s main dialect.
For example, ‘de’ is equivalent to ‘de_DE’ (German as spoken in
Germany), and ‘pt’ to ‘pt_PT’ (Portuguese as spoken in Portugal)
in this context.
Note: The variable LANGUAGE is ignored if the locale is set to
‘C’. In other words, you have to first enable localization, by setting
LANG (or LC_ALL) to a value other than ‘C’, before you can
use a language priority list through the LANGUAGE variable.
Next: Installing Translations for Particular Programs, Previous: Setting the Locale through Environment Variables, Up: The User’s View [Contents][Index]
On Windows, consoles such as the one started by the cmd.exe
program do input and output in an encoding, called “OEM code page”,
that is different from the encoding that text-mode programs usually use,
called “ANSI code page”. (Note: This problem does not exist for
Cygwin consoles; these consoles do input and output in the UTF-8
encoding.) As a workaround, you may request that the programs produce
output in this “OEM” encoding. To do so, set the environment variable
OUTPUT_CHARSET to the “OEM” encoding, through a command such as
set OUTPUT_CHARSET=CP850
Note: This has an effect only on strings looked up in message catalogs; other categories of text are usually not affected by this setting. Note also that this environment variable also affects output sent to a file or to a pipe; output to a file is most often expected to be in the “ANSI” or in the UTF-8 encoding.
Here are examples of the “ANSI” and “OEM” code pages:
| Territories | ANSI encoding | OEM encoding |
|---|---|---|
| Western Europe | CP1252 | CP850 |
| Slavic countries (Latin 2) | CP1250 | CP852 |
| Baltic countries | CP1257 | CP775 |
| Russia | CP1251 | CP866 |
Previous: Obtaining good output in a Windows console, Up: The User’s View [Contents][Index]
Languages are not equally well supported in all packages using GNU
gettext, and more translations are added over time. Usually, you
use the translations that are shipped with the operating system
or with particular packages that you install afterwards. But you can also
install newer localizations directly. For doing this, you will need an
understanding where each localization file is stored on the file system.
For programs that participate in the Translation Project, you can start looking for translations here: https://translationproject.org/team/index.html.
For programs that are part of the KDE project, the starting point is: https://l10n.kde.org/.
For programs that are part of the GNOME project, the starting point is: https://wiki.gnome.org/TranslationProject.
For other programs, you may check whether the program’s source code package contains some ll.po files; often they are kept together in a directory called po/. Each ll.po file contains the message translations for the language whose abbreviation of ll.
Next: Preparing Program Sources, Previous: The User’s View, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
The GNU gettext toolset helps programmers and translators
at producing, updating and using translation files, mainly those
PO files which are textual, editable files. This chapter explains
the format of PO files.
A PO file is made up of many entries, each entry holding the relation between an original untranslated string and its corresponding translation. All entries in a given PO file usually pertain to a single project, and all translations are expressed in a single target language. One PO file entry has the following schematic structure:
white-space # translator-comments #. extracted-comments #: reference… #, flag… #| msgid previous-untranslated-string msgid untranslated-string msgstr translated-string
The general structure of a PO file should be well understood by the translator. When using PO mode, very little has to be known about the format details, as PO mode takes care of them for her.
A simple entry can look like this:
#: lib/error.c:116 msgid "Unknown system error" msgstr "Error desconegut del sistema"
Entries begin with some optional white space. Usually, when generated
through GNU gettext tools, there is exactly one blank line
between entries. Then comments follow, on lines all starting with the
character #. There are two kinds of comments: those which have
some white space immediately following the # - the translator
comments -, which comments are created and maintained exclusively by the
translator, and those which have some non-white character just after the
# - the automatic comments -, which comments are created and
maintained automatically by GNU gettext tools. Comment lines
starting with #. contain comments given by the programmer, directed
at the translator; these comments are called extracted comments
because the xgettext program extracts them from the program’s
source code. Comment lines starting with #: contain references to
the program’s source code. Comment lines starting with #, contain
flags; more about these below. Comment lines starting with #|
contain the previous untranslated string for which the translator gave
a translation.
All comments, of either kind, are optional.
References to the program’s source code, in lines that start with #:,
are of the form file_name:line_number or just
file_name. If the file_name contains spaces. it is enclosed
within Unicode characters U+2068 and U+2069.
After white space and comments, entries show two strings, namely
first the untranslated string as it appears in the original program
sources, and then, the translation of this string. The original
string is introduced by the keyword msgid, and the translation,
by msgstr. The two strings, untranslated and translated,
are quoted in various ways in the PO file, using "
delimiters and \ escapes, but the translator does not really
have to pay attention to the precise quoting format, as PO mode fully
takes care of quoting for her.
The msgid strings, as well as automatic comments, are produced
and managed by other GNU gettext tools, and PO mode does not
provide means for the translator to alter these. The most she can
do is merely deleting them, and only by deleting the whole entry.
On the other hand, the msgstr string, as well as translator
comments, are really meant for the translator, and PO mode gives her
the full control she needs.
The comment lines beginning with #, are special because they are
not completely ignored by the programs as comments generally are. The
comma separated list of flags is used by the msgfmt
program to give the user some better diagnostic messages. Currently
there are two forms of flags defined:
fuzzy ¶This flag can be generated by the msgmerge program or it can be
inserted by the translator herself. It shows that the msgstr
string might not be a correct translation (anymore). Only the translator
can judge if the translation requires further modification, or is
acceptable as is. Once satisfied with the translation, she then removes
this fuzzy attribute. The msgmerge program inserts this
when it combined the msgid and msgstr entries after fuzzy
search only. See Fuzzy Entries.
c-format ¶no-c-formatThese flags should not be added by a human. Instead only the
xgettext program adds them. In an automated PO file processing
system as proposed here, the user’s changes would be thrown away again as
soon as the xgettext program generates a new template file.
The c-format flag indicates that the untranslated string and the
translation are supposed to be C format strings. The no-c-format
flag indicates that they are not C format strings, even though the untranslated
string happens to look like a C format string (with ‘%’ directives).
When the c-format flag is given for a string the msgfmt
program does some more tests to check the validity of the translation.
See Invoking the msgfmt Program, Special Comments preceding Keywords and C Format Strings.
objc-format ¶no-objc-formatLikewise for Objective C, see Objective C Format Strings.
c++-format ¶no-c++-formatLikewise for C++, see C++ Format Strings.
python-format ¶no-python-formatLikewise for Python, see Python Format Strings.
python-brace-format ¶no-python-brace-formatLikewise for Python brace, see Python Format Strings.
java-format ¶no-java-formatLikewise for Java MessageFormat format strings, see Java Format Strings.
java-printf-format ¶no-java-printf-formatLikewise for Java printf format strings, see Java Format Strings.
csharp-format ¶no-csharp-formatLikewise for C#, see C# Format Strings.
javascript-format ¶no-javascript-formatLikewise for JavaScript, see JavaScript Format Strings.
scheme-format ¶no-scheme-formatLikewise for Scheme, see Scheme Format Strings.
lisp-format ¶no-lisp-formatLikewise for Lisp, see Lisp Format Strings.
elisp-format ¶no-elisp-formatLikewise for Emacs Lisp, see Emacs Lisp Format Strings.
librep-format ¶no-librep-formatLikewise for librep, see librep Format Strings.
ruby-format ¶no-ruby-formatLikewise for Ruby, see Ruby Format Strings.
sh-format ¶no-sh-formatLikewise for Shell, see Shell Format Strings.
awk-format ¶no-awk-formatLikewise for awk, see awk Format Strings.
lua-format ¶no-lua-formatLikewise for Lua, see Lua Format Strings.
object-pascal-format ¶no-object-pascal-formatLikewise for Object Pascal, see Object Pascal Format Strings.
smalltalk-format ¶no-smalltalk-formatLikewise for Smalltalk, see Smalltalk Format Strings.
qt-format ¶no-qt-formatLikewise for Qt, see Qt Format Strings.
qt-plural-format ¶no-qt-plural-formatLikewise for Qt plural forms, see Qt Format Strings.
kde-format ¶no-kde-formatLikewise for KDE, see KDE Format Strings.
boost-format ¶no-boost-formatLikewise for Boost, see Boost Format Strings.
tcl-format ¶no-tcl-formatLikewise for Tcl, see Tcl Format Strings.
perl-format ¶no-perl-formatLikewise for Perl, see Perl Format Strings.
perl-brace-format ¶no-perl-brace-formatLikewise for Perl brace, see Perl Format Strings.
php-format ¶no-php-formatLikewise for PHP, see PHP Format Strings.
gcc-internal-format ¶no-gcc-internal-formatLikewise for the GCC sources, see GCC internal Format Strings.
gfc-internal-format ¶no-gfc-internal-formatLikewise for the GNU Fortran Compiler sources, see GFC internal Format Strings.
ycp-format ¶no-ycp-formatLikewise for YCP, see YCP Format Strings.
It is also possible to have entries with a context specifier. They look like this:
white-space # translator-comments #. extracted-comments #: reference… #, flag… #| msgctxt previous-context #| msgid previous-untranslated-string msgctxt context msgid untranslated-string msgstr translated-string
The context serves to disambiguate messages with the same
untranslated-string. It is possible to have several entries with
the same untranslated-string in a PO file, provided that they each
have a different context. Note that an empty context string
and an absent msgctxt line do not mean the same thing.
A different kind of entries is used for translations which involve plural forms.
white-space # translator-comments #. extracted-comments #: reference… #, flag… #| msgid previous-untranslated-string-singular #| msgid_plural previous-untranslated-string-plural msgid untranslated-string-singular msgid_plural untranslated-string-plural msgstr[0] translated-string-case-0 ... msgstr[N] translated-string-case-n
Such an entry can look like this:
#: src/msgcmp.c:338 src/po-lex.c:699 #, c-format msgid "found %d fatal error" msgid_plural "found %d fatal errors" msgstr[0] "s'ha trobat %d error fatal" msgstr[1] "s'han trobat %d errors fatals"
Here also, a msgctxt context can be specified before msgid,
like above.
Here, additional kinds of flags can be used:
range: ¶This flag is followed by a range of non-negative numbers, using the syntax
range: minimum-value..maximum-value. It designates the
possible values that the numeric parameter of the message can take. In some
languages, translators may produce slightly better translations if they know
that the value can only take on values between 0 and 10, for example.
The previous-untranslated-string is optionally inserted by the
msgmerge program, at the same time when it marks a message fuzzy.
It helps the translator to see which changes were done by the developers
on the untranslated-string.
It happens that some lines, usually whitespace or comments, follow the very last entry of a PO file. Such lines are not part of any entry, and will be dropped when the PO file is processed by the tools, or may disturb some PO file editors.
The remainder of this section may be safely skipped by those using a PO file editor, yet it may be interesting for everybody to have a better idea of the precise format of a PO file. On the other hand, those wishing to modify PO files by hand should carefully continue reading on.
An empty untranslated-string is reserved to contain the header entry with the meta information (see Filling in the Header Entry). This header entry should be the first entry of the file. The empty untranslated-string is reserved for this purpose and must not be used anywhere else.
Each of untranslated-string and translated-string respects
the C syntax for a character string, including the surrounding quotes
and embedded backslashed escape sequences, except that universal character
escape sequences (\u and \U) are not allowed. When the time
comes to write multi-line strings, one should not use escaped newlines.
Instead, a closing quote should follow the last character on the
line to be continued, and an opening quote should resume the string
at the beginning of the following PO file line. For example:
msgid "" "Here is an example of how one might continue a very long string\n" "for the common case the string represents multi-line output.\n"
In this example, the empty string is used on the first line, to
allow better alignment of the H from the word ‘Here’
over the f from the word ‘for’. In this example, the
msgid keyword is followed by three strings, which are meant
to be concatenated. Concatenating the empty string does not change
the resulting overall string, but it is a way for us to comply with
the necessity of msgid to be followed by a string on the same
line, while keeping the multi-line presentation left-justified, as
we find this to be a cleaner disposition. The empty string could have
been omitted, but only if the string starting with ‘Here’ was
promoted on the first line, right after msgid.2 It was not really necessary
either to switch between the two last quoted strings immediately after
the newline ‘\n’, the switch could have occurred after any
other character, we just did it this way because it is neater.
One should carefully distinguish between end of lines marked as ‘\n’ inside quotes, which are part of the represented string, and end of lines in the PO file itself, outside string quotes, which have no incidence on the represented string.
Outside strings, white lines and comments may be used freely.
Comments start at the beginning of a line with ‘#’ and extend
until the end of the PO file line. Comments written by translators
should have the initial ‘#’ immediately followed by some white
space. If the ‘#’ is not immediately followed by white space,
this comment is most likely generated and managed by specialized GNU
tools, and might disappear or be replaced unexpectedly when the PO
file is given to msgmerge.
For a PO file to be valid, no two entries without msgctxt may have
the same untranslated-string or untranslated-string-singular.
Similarly, no two entries may have the same msgctxt and the same
untranslated-string or untranslated-string-singular.
Next: Making the PO Template File, Previous: The Format of PO Files, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
For the programmer, changes to the C source code fall into three
categories. First, you have to make the localization functions
known to all modules needing message translation. Second, you should
properly trigger the operation of GNU gettext when the program
initializes, usually from the main function. Last, you should
identify, adjust and mark all constant strings in your program
needing translation.
gettext declarationgettext Operations
Next: Triggering gettext Operations, Up: Preparing Program Sources [Contents][Index]
gettext declarationPresuming that your set of programs, or package, has been adjusted
so all needed GNU gettext files are available, and your
Makefile files are adjusted (see The Maintainer’s View), each C module
having translated C strings should contain the line:
#include <libintl.h>
Similarly, each C module containing printf()/fprintf()/...
calls with a format string that could be a translated C string (even if
the C string comes from a different C module) should contain the line:
#include <libintl.h>
Next: Preparing Translatable Strings, Previous: Importing the gettext declaration, Up: Preparing Program Sources [Contents][Index]
gettext OperationsThe initialization of locale data should be done with more or less the same code in every program, as demonstrated below:
int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
…
setlocale (LC_ALL, "");
bindtextdomain (PACKAGE, LOCALEDIR);
textdomain (PACKAGE);
…
}
PACKAGE and LOCALEDIR should be provided either by
config.h or by the Makefile. For now consult the gettext
or hello sources for more information.
The use of LC_ALL might not be appropriate for you.
LC_ALL includes all locale categories and especially
LC_CTYPE. This latter category is responsible for determining
character classes with the isalnum etc. functions from
ctype.h which could especially for programs, which process some
kind of input language, be wrong. For example this would mean that a
source code using the ç (c-cedilla character) is runnable in
France but not in the U.S.
Some systems also have problems with parsing numbers using the
scanf functions if an other but the LC_ALL locale category is
used. The standards say that additional formats but the one known in the
"C" locale might be recognized. But some systems seem to reject
numbers in the "C" locale format. In some situation, it might
also be a problem with the notation itself which makes it impossible to
recognize whether the number is in the "C" locale or the local
format. This can happen if thousands separator characters are used.
Some locales define this character according to the national
conventions to '.' which is the same character used in the
"C" locale to denote the decimal point.
So it is sometimes necessary to replace the LC_ALL line in the
code above by a sequence of setlocale lines
{
…
setlocale (LC_CTYPE, "");
setlocale (LC_MESSAGES, "");
…
}
On all POSIX conformant systems the locale categories LC_CTYPE,
LC_MESSAGES, LC_COLLATE, LC_MONETARY,
LC_NUMERIC, and LC_TIME are available. On some systems
which are only ISO C compliant, LC_MESSAGES is missing, but
a substitute for it is defined in GNU gettext’s <libintl.h> and
in GNU gnulib’s <locale.h>.
Note that changing the LC_CTYPE also affects the functions
declared in the <ctype.h> standard header and some functions
declared in the <string.h> and <stdlib.h> standard headers.
If this is not
desirable in your application (for example in a compiler’s parser),
you can use a set of substitute functions which hardwire the C locale,
such as found in the modules ‘c-ctype’, ‘c-strcase’,
‘c-strcasestr’, ‘c-strtod’, ‘c-strtold’ in the GNU gnulib
source distribution.
It is also possible to switch the locale forth and back between the
environment dependent locale and the C locale, but this approach is
normally avoided because a setlocale call is expensive,
because it is tedious to determine the places where a locale switch
is needed in a large program’s source, and because switching a locale
is not multithread-safe.
Next: How Marks Appear in Sources, Previous: Triggering gettext Operations, Up: Preparing Program Sources [Contents][Index]
Before strings can be marked for translations, they sometimes need to be adjusted. Usually preparing a string for translation is done right before marking it, during the marking phase which is described in the next sections. What you have to keep in mind while doing that is the following.
Let’s look at some examples of these guidelines.
Translatable strings should be in good English style. If slang language with abbreviations and shortcuts is used, often translators will not understand the message and will produce very inappropriate translations.
"%s: is parameter\n"
This is nearly untranslatable: Is the displayed item a parameter or the parameter?
"No match"
The ambiguity in this message makes it unintelligible: Is the program attempting to set something on fire? Does it mean "The given object does not match the template"? Does it mean "The template does not fit for any of the objects"?
In both cases, adding more words to the message will help both the translator and the English speaking user.
Translatable strings should be entire sentences. It is often not possible to translate single verbs or adjectives in a substitutable way.
printf ("File %s is %s protected", filename, rw ? "write" : "read");
Most translators will not look at the source and will thus only see the
string "File %s is %s protected", which is unintelligible. Change
this to
printf (rw ? "File %s is write protected" : "File %s is read protected",
filename);
This way the translator will not only understand the message, she will also be able to find the appropriate grammatical construction. A French translator for example translates "write protected" like "protected against writing".
Entire sentences are also important because in many languages, the declination of some word in a sentence depends on the gender or the number (singular/plural) of another part of the sentence. There are usually more interdependencies between words than in English. The consequence is that asking a translator to translate two half-sentences and then combining these two half-sentences through dumb string concatenation will not work, for many languages, even though it would work for English. That’s why translators need to handle entire sentences.
Often sentences don’t fit into a single line. If a sentence is output
using two subsequent printf statements, like this
printf ("Locale charset \"%s\" is different from\n", lcharset);
printf ("input file charset \"%s\".\n", fcharset);
the translator would have to translate two half sentences, but nothing
in the POT file would tell her that the two half sentences belong together.
It is necessary to merge the two printf statements so that the
translator can handle the entire sentence at once and decide at which
place to insert a line break in the translation (if at all):
printf ("Locale charset \"%s\" is different from\n\
input file charset \"%s\".\n", lcharset, fcharset);
You may now ask: how about two or more adjacent sentences? Like in this case:
puts ("Apollo 13 scenario: Stack overflow handling failed.");
puts ("On the next stack overflow we will crash!!!");
Should these two statements merged into a single one? I would recommend to merge them if the two sentences are related to each other, because then it makes it easier for the translator to understand and translate both. On the other hand, if one of the two messages is a stereotypic one, occurring in other places as well, you will do a favour to the translator by not merging the two. (Identical messages occurring in several places are combined by xgettext, so the translator has to handle them once only.)
Translatable strings should be limited to one paragraph; don’t let a single message be longer than ten lines. The reason is that when the translatable string changes, the translator is faced with the task of updating the entire translated string. Maybe only a single word will have changed in the English string, but the translator doesn’t see that (with the current translation tools), therefore she has to proofread the entire message.
Many GNU programs have a ‘--help’ output that extends over several screen pages. It is a courtesy towards the translators to split such a message into several ones of five to ten lines each. While doing that, you can also attempt to split the documented options into groups, such as the input options, the output options, and the informative output options. This will help every user to find the option he is looking for.
Hardcoded string concatenation is sometimes used to construct English strings:
strcpy (s, "Replace "); strcat (s, object1); strcat (s, " with "); strcat (s, object2); strcat (s, "?");
In order to present to the translator only entire sentences, and also
because in some languages the translator might want to swap the order
of object1 and object2, it is necessary to change this
to use a format string:
sprintf (s, "Replace %s with %s?", object1, object2);
A similar case is compile time concatenation of strings. The ISO C 99
include file <inttypes.h> contains a macro PRId64 that
can be used as a formatting directive for outputting an ‘int64_t’
integer through printf. It expands to a constant string, usually
"d" or "ld" or "lld" or something like this, depending on the platform.
Assume you have code like
printf ("The amount is %0" PRId64 "\n", number);
The gettext tools and library have special support for these
<inttypes.h> macros. You can therefore simply write
printf (gettext ("The amount is %0" PRId64 "\n"), number);
The PO file will contain the string "The amount is %0<PRId64>\n".
The translators will provide a translation containing "%0<PRId64>"
as well, and at runtime the gettext function’s result will
contain the appropriate constant string, "d" or "ld" or "lld".
This works only for the predefined <inttypes.h> macros. If
you have defined your own similar macros, let’s say ‘MYPRId64’,
that are not known to xgettext, the solution for this problem
is to change the code like this:
char buf1[100];
sprintf (buf1, "%0" MYPRId64, number);
printf (gettext ("The amount is %s\n"), buf1);
This means, you put the platform dependent code in one statement, and the internationalization code in a different statement. Note that a buffer length of 100 is safe, because all available hardware integer types are limited to 128 bits, and to print a 128 bit integer one needs at most 54 characters, regardless whether in decimal, octal or hexadecimal.
All this applies to other programming languages as well. For example, in Java and C#, string concatenation is very frequently used, because it is a compiler built-in operator. Like in C, in Java, you would change
System.out.println("Replace "+object1+" with "+object2+"?");
into a statement involving a format string:
System.out.println(
MessageFormat.format("Replace {0} with {1}?",
new Object[] { object1, object2 }));
Similarly, in C#, you would change
Console.WriteLine("Replace "+object1+" with "+object2+"?");
into a statement involving a format string:
Console.WriteLine(
String.Format("Replace {0} with {1}?", object1, object2));
It is good to not embed URLs in translatable strings, for several reasons:
The same holds for email addresses.
So, you would change
fputs (_("GNU GPL version 3 <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>\n"),
stream);
to
fprintf (stream, _("GNU GPL version 3 <%s>\n"),
"https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html");
The GNU C Library’s <printf.h> facility and the C++ standard library’s <format> header file make it possible for the programmer to define their own format string directives. However, such format directives cannot be used in translatable strings, for two reasons:
To avoid this situation, you need to move the formatting with the custom directive into a format string that does not get translated.
For example, assuming code that makes use of a %r directive:
fprintf (stream, _("The contents is: %r"), data);
you would rewrite it to:
char *tmp;
if (asprintf (&tmp, "%r", data) < 0)
error (...);
fprintf (stream, _("The contents is: %s"), tmp);
free (tmp);
Similarly, in C++, assuming you have defined a custom formatter for the type of data, the code
cout << format (_("The contents is: {:#$#}"), data);
should be rewritten to:
string tmp = format ("{:#$#}", data);
cout << format (_("The contents is: {}"), tmp);
Unusual markup or control characters should not be used in translatable strings. Translators will likely not understand the particular meaning of the markup or control characters.
For example, if you have a convention that ‘|’ delimits the left-hand and right-hand part of some GUI elements, translators will often not understand it without specific comments. It might be better to have the translator translate the left-hand and right-hand part separately.
Another example is the ‘argp’ convention to use a single ‘\v’ (vertical tab) control character to delimit two sections inside a string. This is flawed. Some translators may convert it to a simple newline, some to blank lines. With some PO file editors it may not be easy to even enter a vertical tab control character. So, you cannot be sure that the translation will contain a ‘\v’ character, at the corresponding position. The solution is, again, to let the translator translate two separate strings and combine at run-time the two translated strings with the ‘\v’ required by the convention.
HTML markup, however, is common enough that it’s probably ok to use in translatable strings. But please bear in mind that the GNU gettext tools don’t verify that the translations are well-formed HTML.
Next: Marking Translatable Strings, Previous: Preparing Translatable Strings, Up: Preparing Program Sources [Contents][Index]
All strings requiring translation should be marked in the C sources. Marking
is done in such a way that each translatable string appears to be
the sole argument of some function or preprocessor macro. There are
only a few such possible functions or macros meant for translation,
and their names are said to be marking keywords. The marking is
attached to strings themselves, rather than to what we do with them.
This approach has more uses. A blatant example is an error message
produced by formatting. The format string needs translation, as
well as some strings inserted through some ‘%s’ specification
in the format, while the result from sprintf may have so many
different instances that it is impractical to list them all in some
‘error_string_out()’ routine, say.
This marking operation has two goals. The first goal of marking is for triggering the retrieval of the translation, at run time. The keyword is possibly resolved into a routine able to dynamically return the proper translation, as far as possible or wanted, for the argument string. Most localizable strings are found in executable positions, that is, attached to variables or given as parameters to functions. But this is not universal usage, and some translatable strings appear in structured initializations. See Special Cases of Translatable Strings.
The second goal of the marking operation is to help xgettext
at properly extracting all translatable strings when it scans a set
of program sources and produces PO file templates.
The canonical keyword for marking translatable strings is
‘gettext’, it gave its name to the whole GNU gettext
package. For packages making only light use of the ‘gettext’
keyword, macro or function, it is easily used as is. However,
for packages using the gettext interface more heavily, it
is usually more convenient to give the main keyword a shorter, less
obtrusive name. Indeed, the keyword might appear on a lot of strings
all over the package, and programmers usually do not want nor need
their program sources to remind them forcefully, all the time, that they
are internationalized. Further, a long keyword has the disadvantage
of using more horizontal space, forcing more indentation work on
sources for those trying to keep them within 79 or 80 columns.
Many packages use ‘_’ (a simple underline) as a keyword,
and write ‘_("Translatable string")’ instead of ‘gettext
("Translatable string")’. Further, the coding rule, from GNU standards,
wanting that there is a space between the keyword and the opening
parenthesis is relaxed, in practice, for this particular usage.
So, the textual overhead per translatable string is reduced to
only three characters: the underline and the two parentheses.
However, even if GNU gettext uses this convention internally,
it does not offer it officially. The real, genuine keyword is truly
‘gettext’ indeed. It is fairly easy for those wanting to use
‘_’ instead of ‘gettext’ to declare:
#include <libintl.h> #define _(String) gettext (String)
instead of merely using ‘#include <libintl.h>’.
The marking keywords ‘gettext’ and ‘_’ take the translatable
string as sole argument. It is also possible to define marking functions
that take it at another argument position. It is even possible to make
the marked argument position depend on the total number of arguments of
the function call; this is useful in C++. All this is achieved using
xgettext’s ‘--keyword’ option. How to pass such an option
to xgettext, assuming that gettextize is used, is described
in Makevars in po/ and AM_XGETTEXT_OPTION in po.m4.
Note also that long strings can be split across lines, into multiple
adjacent string tokens. Automatic string concatenation is performed
at compile time according to ISO C and ISO C++; xgettext also
supports this syntax.
In C++, marking a C++ format string requires a small code change,
because the first argument to std::format must be a constant
expression.
For example,
std::format ("{} {}!", "Hello", "world")
needs to be changed to
std::vformat (gettext ("{} {}!"), std::make_format_args("Hello", "world"))
Later on, the maintenance is relatively easy. If, as a programmer, you add or modify a string, you will have to ask yourself if the new or altered string requires translation, and include it within ‘_()’ if you think it should be translated. For example, ‘"%s"’ is an example of string not requiring translation. But ‘"%s: %d"’ does require translation, because in French, unlike in English, it’s customary to put a space before a colon.
Next: Special Comments preceding Keywords, Previous: How Marks Appear in Sources, Up: Preparing Program Sources [Contents][Index]
In PO mode, one set of features is meant more for the programmer than for the translator, and allows him to interactively mark which strings, in a set of program sources, are translatable, and which are not. Even if it is a fairly easy job for a programmer to find and mark such strings by other means, using any editor of his choice, PO mode makes this work more comfortable. Further, this gives translators who feel a little like programmers, or programmers who feel a little like translators, a tool letting them work at marking translatable strings in the program sources, while simultaneously producing a set of translation in some language, for the package being internationalized.
The set of program sources, targeted by the PO mode commands describe here, should have an Emacs tags table constructed for your project, prior to using these PO file commands. This is easy to do. In any shell window, change the directory to the root of your project, then execute a command resembling:
etags src/*.[hc] lib/*.[hc]
presuming here you want to process all .h and .c files from the src/ and lib/ directories. This command will explore all said files and create a TAGS file in your root directory, somewhat summarizing the contents using a special file format Emacs can understand.
For packages following the GNU coding standards, there is
a make goal tags or TAGS which constructs the tag files in
all directories and for all files containing source code.
Once your TAGS file is ready, the following commands assist the programmer at marking translatable strings in his set of sources. But these commands are necessarily driven from within a PO file window, and it is likely that you do not even have such a PO file yet. This is not a problem at all, as you may safely open a new, empty PO file, mainly for using these commands. This empty PO file will slowly fill in while you mark strings as translatable in your program sources.
Search through program sources for a string which looks like a
candidate for translation (po-tags-search).
Mark the last string found with ‘_()’ (po-mark-translatable).
Mark the last string found with a keyword taken from a set of possible
keywords. This command with a prefix allows some management of these
keywords (po-select-mark-and-mark).
The , (po-tags-search) command searches for the next
occurrence of a string which looks like a possible candidate for
translation, and displays the program source in another Emacs window,
positioned in such a way that the string is near the top of this other
window. If the string is too big to fit whole in this window, it is
positioned so only its end is shown. In any case, the cursor
is left in the PO file window. If the shown string would be better
presented differently in different native languages, you may mark it
using M-, or M-.. Otherwise, you might rather ignore it
and skip to the next string by merely repeating the , command.
A string is a good candidate for translation if it contains a sequence of three or more letters. A string containing at most two letters in a row will be considered as a candidate if it has more letters than non-letters. The command disregards strings containing no letters, or isolated letters only. It also disregards strings within comments, or strings already marked with some keyword PO mode knows (see below).
If you have never told Emacs about some TAGS file to use, the command will request that you specify one from the minibuffer, the first time you use the command. You may later change your TAGS file by using the regular Emacs command M-x visit-tags-table, which will ask you to name the precise TAGS file you want to use. See Tag Tables in The Emacs Editor.
Each time you use the , command, the search resumes from where it was left by the previous search, and goes through all program sources, obeying the TAGS file, until all sources have been processed. However, by giving a prefix argument to the command (C-u ,), you may request that the search be restarted all over again from the first program source; but in this case, strings that you recently marked as translatable will be automatically skipped.
Using this , command does not prevent using of other regular
Emacs tags commands. For example, regular tags-search or
tags-query-replace commands may be used without disrupting the
independent , search sequence. However, as implemented, the
initial , command (or the , command is used with a
prefix) might also reinitialize the regular Emacs tags searching to the
first tags file, this reinitialization might be considered spurious.
The M-, (po-mark-translatable) command will mark the
recently found string with the ‘_’ keyword. The M-.
(po-select-mark-and-mark) command will request that you type
one keyword from the minibuffer and use that keyword for marking
the string. Both commands will automatically create a new PO file
untranslated entry for the string being marked, and make it the
current entry (making it easy for you to immediately proceed to its
translation, if you feel like doing it right away). It is possible
that the modifications made to the program source by M-, or
M-. render some source line longer than 80 columns, forcing you
to break and re-indent this line differently. You may use the O
command from PO mode, or any other window changing command from
Emacs, to break out into the program source window, and do any
needed adjustments. You will have to use some regular Emacs command
to return the cursor to the PO file window, if you want command
, for the next string, say.
The M-. command has a few built-in speedups, so you do not have to explicitly type all keywords all the time. The first such speedup is that you are presented with a preferred keyword, which you may accept by merely typing RET at the prompt. The second speedup is that you may type any non-ambiguous prefix of the keyword you really mean, and the command will complete it automatically for you. This also means that PO mode has to know all your possible keywords, and that it will not accept mistyped keywords.
If you reply ? to the keyword request, the command gives a list of all known keywords, from which you may choose. When the command is prefixed by an argument (C-u M-.), it inhibits updating any program source or PO file buffer, and does some simple keyword management instead. In this case, the command asks for a keyword, written in full, which becomes a new allowed keyword for later M-. commands. Moreover, this new keyword automatically becomes the preferred keyword for later commands. By typing an already known keyword in response to C-u M-., one merely changes the preferred keyword and does nothing more.
All keywords known for M-. are recognized by the , command when scanning for strings, and strings already marked by any of those known keywords are automatically skipped. If many PO files are opened simultaneously, each one has its own independent set of known keywords. There is no provision in PO mode, currently, for deleting a known keyword, you have to quit the file (maybe using q) and reopen it afresh. When a PO file is newly brought up in an Emacs window, only ‘gettext’ and ‘_’ are known as keywords, and ‘gettext’ is preferred for the M-. command. In fact, this is not useful to prefer ‘_’, as this one is already built in the M-, command.
Next: Special Cases of Translatable Strings, Previous: Marking Translatable Strings, Up: Preparing Program Sources [Contents][Index]
In C programs strings are often used within calls of functions from the
printf family. The special thing about these format strings is
that they can contain format specifiers introduced with %. Assume
we have the code
printf (gettext ("String `%s' has %d characters\n"), s, strlen (s));
A possible German translation for the above string might be:
"%d Zeichen lang ist die Zeichenkette `%s'"
A C programmer, even if he cannot speak German, will recognize that
there is something wrong here. The order of the two format specifiers
is changed but of course the arguments in the printf don’t have.
This will most probably lead to problems because now the length of the
string is regarded as the address.
To prevent errors at runtime caused by translations, the msgfmt
tool can check statically whether the arguments in the original and the
translation string match in type and number. If this is not the case
and the ‘-c’ option has been passed to msgfmt, msgfmt
will give an error and refuse to produce a MO file. Thus consistent
use of ‘msgfmt -c’ will catch the error, so that it cannot cause
problems at runtime.
If the word order in the above German translation would be correct one would have to write
"%2$d Zeichen lang ist die Zeichenkette `%1$s'"
The routines in msgfmt know about this special notation.
Because not all strings in a program will be format strings, it is not
useful for msgfmt to test all the strings in the .po file.
This might cause problems because the string might contain what looks
like a format specifier, but the string is not used in printf.
Therefore xgettext adds a special tag to those messages it
thinks might be a format string. There is no absolute rule for this,
only a heuristic. In the .po file the entry is marked using the
c-format flag in the #, comment line (see The Format of PO Files).
The careful reader now might say that this again can cause problems.
The heuristic might guess it wrong. This is true and therefore
xgettext knows about a special kind of comment which lets
the programmer take over the decision. If in the same line as or
the immediately preceding line to the gettext keyword
the xgettext program finds a comment containing the words
xgettext:c-format, it will mark the string in any case with
the c-format flag. This kind of comment should be used when
xgettext does not recognize the string as a format string but
it really is one and it should be tested. Please note that when the
comment is in the same line as the gettext keyword, it must be
before the string to be translated. Also note that a comment such as
xgettext:c-format applies only to the first string in the same
or the next line, not to multiple strings.
This situation happens quite often. The printf function is often
called with strings which do not contain a format specifier. Of course
one would normally use fputs but it does happen. In this case
xgettext does not recognize this as a format string but what
happens if the translation introduces a valid format specifier? The
printf function will try to access one of the parameters but none
exists because the original code does not pass any parameters.
xgettext of course could make a wrong decision the other way
round, i.e. a string marked as a format string actually is not a format
string. In this case the msgfmt might give too many warnings and
would prevent translating the .po file. The method to prevent
this wrong decision is similar to the one used above, only the comment
to use must contain the string xgettext:no-c-format.
If a string is marked with c-format and this is not correct the
user can find out who is responsible for the decision. See
Invoking the xgettext Program to see how the --debug option can be
used for solving this problem.
Next: Letting Users Report Translation Bugs, Previous: Special Comments preceding Keywords, Up: Preparing Program Sources [Contents][Index]
The attentive reader might now point out that it is not always possible
to mark translatable string with gettext or something like this.
Consider the following case:
{
static const char *messages[] = {
"some very meaningful message",
"and another one"
};
const char *string;
…
string
= index > 1 ? "a default message" : messages[index];
fputs (string);
…
}
While it is no problem to mark the string "a default message" it
is not possible to mark the string initializers for messages.
What is to be done? We have to fulfill two tasks. First we have to mark the
strings so that the xgettext program (see Invoking the xgettext Program)
can find them, and second we have to translate the string at runtime
before printing them.
The first task can be fulfilled by creating a new keyword, which names a no-op. For the second we have to mark all access points to a string from the array. So one solution can look like this:
#define gettext_noop(String) String
{
static const char *messages[] = {
gettext_noop ("some very meaningful message"),
gettext_noop ("and another one")
};
const char *string;
…
string
= index > 1 ? gettext ("a default message") : gettext (messages[index]);
fputs (string);
…
}
Please convince yourself that the string which is written by
fputs is translated in any case. How to get xgettext know
the additional keyword gettext_noop is explained in Invoking the xgettext Program.
The above is of course not the only solution. You could also come along with the following one:
#define gettext_noop(String) String
{
static const char *messages[] = {
gettext_noop ("some very meaningful message"),
gettext_noop ("and another one")
};
const char *string;
…
string
= index > 1 ? gettext_noop ("a default message") : messages[index];
fputs (gettext (string));
…
}
But this has a drawback. The programmer has to take care that
he uses gettext_noop for the string "a default message".
A use of gettext could have in rare cases unpredictable results.
One advantage is that you need not make control flow analysis to make sure the output is really translated in any case. But this analysis is generally not very difficult. If it should be in any situation you can use this second method in this situation.
Next: Marking Proper Names for Translation, Previous: Special Cases of Translatable Strings, Up: Preparing Program Sources [Contents][Index]
Code sometimes has bugs, but translations sometimes have bugs too. The users need to be able to report them. Reporting translation bugs to the programmer or maintainer of a package is not very useful, since the maintainer must never change a translation, except on behalf of the translator. Hence the translation bugs must be reported to the translators.
Here is a way to organize this so that the maintainer does not need to forward translation bug reports, nor even keep a list of the addresses of the translators or their translation teams.
Every program has a place where is shows the bug report address. For GNU programs, it is the code which handles the “–help” option, typically in a function called “usage”. In this place, instruct the translator to add her own bug reporting address. For example, if that code has a statement
printf (_("Report bugs to <%s>.\n"), PACKAGE_BUGREPORT);
you can add some translator instructions like this:
/* TRANSLATORS: The placeholder indicates the bug-reporting address
for this package. Please add _another line_ saying
"Report translation bugs to <...>\n" with the address for translation
bugs (typically your translation team's web or email address). */
printf (_("Report bugs to <%s>.\n"), PACKAGE_BUGREPORT);
These will be extracted by ‘xgettext’, leading to a .pot file that contains this:
#. TRANSLATORS: The placeholder indicates the bug-reporting address #. for this package. Please add _another line_ saying #. "Report translation bugs to <...>\n" with the address for translation #. bugs (typically your translation team's web or email address). #: src/hello.c:178 #, c-format msgid "Report bugs to <%s>.\n" msgstr ""
Next: Preparing Library Sources, Previous: Letting Users Report Translation Bugs, Up: Preparing Program Sources [Contents][Index]
Should names of persons, cities, locations etc. be marked for translation or not? People who only know languages that can be written with Latin letters (English, Spanish, French, German, etc.) are tempted to say “no”, because names usually do not change when transported between these languages. However, in general when translating from one script to another, names are translated too, usually phonetically or by transliteration. For example, Russian or Greek names are converted to the Latin alphabet when being translated to English, and English or French names are converted to the Katakana script when being translated to Japanese. This is necessary because the speakers of the target language in general cannot read the script the name is originally written in.
As a programmer, you should therefore make sure that names are marked for translation, with a special comment telling the translators that it is a proper name and how to pronounce it. In its simple form, it looks like this:
printf (_("Written by %s.\n"),
/* TRANSLATORS: This is a proper name. See the gettext
manual, section Names. Note this is actually a non-ASCII
name: The first name is (with Unicode escapes)
"Fran\u00e7ois" or (with HTML entities) "François".
Pronunciation is like "fraa-swa pee-nar". */
_("Francois Pinard"));
The GNU gnulib library offers a module ‘propername’ (https://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/MODULES.html#module=propername) which takes care to automatically append the original name, in parentheses, to the translated name. For names that cannot be written in ASCII, it also frees the translator from the task of entering the appropriate non-ASCII characters if no script change is needed. In this more comfortable form, it looks like this:
printf (_("Written by %s and %s.\n"),
proper_name ("Ulrich Drepper"),
/* TRANSLATORS: This is a proper name. See the gettext
manual, section Names. Note this is actually a non-ASCII
name: The first name is (with Unicode escapes)
"Fran\u00e7ois" or (with HTML entities) "François".
Pronunciation is like "fraa-swa pee-nar". */
proper_name_utf8 ("Francois Pinard", "Fran\303\247ois Pinard"));
You can also write the original name directly in Unicode (rather than with Unicode escapes or HTML entities) and denote the pronunciation using the International Phonetic Alphabet (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet).
As a translator, you should use some care when translating names, because it is frustrating if people see their names mutilated or distorted.
If your language uses the Latin script, all you need to do is to reproduce the name as perfectly as you can within the usual character set of your language. In this particular case, this means to provide a translation containing the c-cedilla character. If your language uses a different script and the people speaking it don’t usually read Latin words, it means transliteration. If the programmer used the simple case, you should still give, in parentheses, the original writing of the name – for the sake of the people that do read the Latin script. If the programmer used the ‘propername’ module mentioned above, you don’t need to give the original writing of the name in parentheses, because the program will already do so. Here is an example, using Greek as the target script:
#. This is a proper name. See the gettext
#. manual, section Names. Note this is actually a non-ASCII
#. name: The first name is (with Unicode escapes)
#. "Fran\u00e7ois" or (with HTML entities) "François".
#. Pronunciation is like "fraa-swa pee-nar".
msgid "Francois Pinard"
msgstr "\phi\rho\alpha\sigma\omicron\alpha \pi\iota\nu\alpha\rho"
" (Francois Pinard)"
Because translation of names is such a sensitive domain, it is a good idea to test your translation before submitting it.
Previous: Marking Proper Names for Translation, Up: Preparing Program Sources [Contents][Index]
When you are preparing a library, not a program, for the use of
gettext, only a few details are different. Here we assume that
the library has a translation domain and a POT file of its own. (If
it uses the translation domain and POT file of the main program, then
the previous sections apply without changes.)
setlocale (LC_ALL, ""). It’s the
responsibility of the main program to set the locale. The library’s
documentation should mention this fact, so that developers of programs
using the library are aware of it.
textdomain (PACKAGE), because it
would interfere with the text domain set by the main program.
setlocale (LC_ALL, ""); bindtextdomain (PACKAGE, LOCALEDIR); textdomain (PACKAGE);
For a library it is reduced to
bindtextdomain (PACKAGE, LOCALEDIR);
If your library’s API doesn’t already have an initialization function,
you need to create one, containing at least the bindtextdomain
invocation. However, you usually don’t need to export and document this
initialization function: It is sufficient that all entry points of the
library call the initialization function if it hasn’t been called before.
The typical idiom used to achieve this is a static boolean variable that
indicates whether the initialization function has been called. If the
library is meant to be used in multithreaded applications, this variable
needs to be marked volatile, so that its value get propagated
between threads. Like this:
static volatile bool libfoo_initialized;
static void
libfoo_initialize (void)
{
bindtextdomain (PACKAGE, LOCALEDIR);
libfoo_initialized = true;
}
/* This function is part of the exported API. */
struct foo *
create_foo (...)
{
/* Must ensure the initialization is performed. */
if (!libfoo_initialized)
libfoo_initialize ();
...
}
/* This function is part of the exported API. The argument must be
non-NULL and have been created through create_foo(). */
int
foo_refcount (struct foo *argument)
{
/* No need to invoke the initialization function here, because
create_foo() must already have been called before. */
...
}
The more general solution for initialization functions, POSIX
pthread_once, is not needed in this case.
#include <libintl.h> #define _(String) gettext (String)
for a program. For a library, which has its own translation domain, it reads like this:
#include <libintl.h> #define _(String) dgettext (PACKAGE, String)
In other words, dgettext is used instead of gettext.
Similarly, the dngettext function should be used in place of the
ngettext function.
Next: Creating a New PO File, Previous: Preparing Program Sources, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
After preparing the sources, the programmer creates a PO template file.
This section explains how to use xgettext for this purpose.
xgettext creates a file named domainname.po. You
should then rename it to domainname.pot. (Why doesn’t
xgettext create it under the name domainname.pot
right away? The answer is: for historical reasons. When xgettext
was specified, the distinction between a PO file and PO file template
was fuzzy, and the suffix ‘.pot’ wasn’t in use at that time.)
xgettext Programxgettext [option] [inputfile] …
The xgettext program extracts translatable strings from given
input files.
Input files.
Read the names of the input files from file instead of getting them from the command line.
Add directory to the list of directories. Source files are searched relative to this list of directories. The resulting .po file will be written relative to the current directory, though.
If inputfile is ‘-’, standard input is read.
Use name.po for output (instead of messages.po).
Write output to specified file (instead of name.po or messages.po).
Output files will be placed in directory dir.
If the output file is ‘-’ or ‘/dev/stdout’, the output is written to standard output.
Specifies the language of the input files. The supported languages
are C, C++, ObjectiveC, PO, Shell,
Python, Lisp, EmacsLisp, librep, Scheme,
Smalltalk, Java, JavaProperties, C#, awk,
YCP, Tcl, Perl, PHP, Ruby,
GCC-source, NXStringTable, RST, RSJ, Glade,
Lua, JavaScript, Vala, GSettings, Desktop.
This is a shorthand for --language=C++.
By default the language is guessed depending on the input file name extension.
Specifies the encoding of the input files. This option is needed only if some untranslated message strings or their corresponding comments contain non-ASCII characters. Note that Tcl and Glade input files are always assumed to be in UTF-8, regardless of this option.
By default the input files are assumed to be in ASCII.
Join messages with existing file.
Entries from file are not extracted. file should be a PO or POT file.
Place comment blocks starting with tag and preceding keyword lines in the output file. Without a tag, the option means to put all comment blocks preceding keyword lines in the output file.
Note that comment blocks are only extracted if there is no program code between the comment and the string that gets extracted. For example, in the following C source code:
/* This is the first comment. */
gettext ("foo");
/* This is the second comment: not extracted */
gettext (
"bar");
gettext (
/* This is the third comment. */
"baz");
/* This is the fourth comment. */
gettext ("I love blank lines in my programs");
the second comment line will not be extracted, because there is a line with some tokens between the comment line and the line that contains the string. But the fourth comment is extracted, because between it and the line with the string there is merely a blank line.
Perform a syntax check on msgid and msgid_plural. The supported checks are:
Prefer Unicode ellipsis character over ASCII ...
Prohibit whitespace before an ellipsis character
Prefer Unicode quotation marks over ASCII "'`
Prefer Unicode bullet character over ASCII * or -
The option has an effect on all input files. To enable or disable
checks for a certain string, you can mark it with an xgettext:
special comment in the source file. For example, if you specify the
--check=space-ellipsis option, but want to suppress the check on
a particular string, add the following comment:
/* xgettext: no-space-ellipsis-check */
gettext ("We really want a space before ellipsis here ...");
The xgettext: comment can be followed by flags separated with a
comma. The possible flags are of the form ‘[no-]name-check’,
where name is the name of a valid syntax check. If a flag is
prefixed by no-, the meaning is negated.
Some tests apply the checks to each sentence within the msgid, rather
than the whole string. xgettext detects the end of sentence by
performing a pattern match, which usually looks for a period followed by
a certain number of spaces. The number is specified with the
--sentence-end option.
The supported values are:
Expect at least one whitespace after a period
Expect at least two whitespaces after a period
Extract all strings.
This option has an effect with most languages, namely C, C++, ObjectiveC, Shell, Python, Lisp, EmacsLisp, librep, Java, C#, awk, Tcl, Perl, PHP, GCC-source, Glade, Lua, JavaScript, Vala, GSettings.
Specify keywordspec as an additional keyword to be looked for. Without a keywordspec, the option means to not use default keywords.
If keywordspec is a C identifier id, xgettext looks
for strings in the first argument of each call to the function or macro
id. If keywordspec is of the form
‘id:argnum’, xgettext looks for strings in the
argnumth argument of the call. If keywordspec is of the form
‘id:argnum1,argnum2’, xgettext looks for
strings in the argnum1st argument and in the argnum2nd argument
of the call, and treats them as singular/plural variants for a message
with plural handling. Also, if keywordspec is of the form
‘id:contextargnumc,argnum’ or
‘id:argnum,contextargnumc’, xgettext treats
strings in the contextargnumth argument as a context specifier.
And, as a special-purpose support for GNOME, if keywordspec is of the
form ‘id:argnumg’, xgettext recognizes the
argnumth argument as a string with context, using the GNOME glib
syntax ‘"msgctxt|msgid"’.
Furthermore, if keywordspec is of the form
‘id:…,totalnumargst’, xgettext recognizes this
argument specification only if the number of actual arguments is equal to
totalnumargs. This is useful for disambiguating overloaded function
calls in C++.
Finally, if keywordspec is of the form
‘id:argnum...,"xcomment"’, xgettext, when
extracting a message from the specified argument strings, adds an extracted
comment xcomment to the message. Note that when used through a normal
shell command line, the double-quotes around the xcomment need to be
escaped.
This option has an effect with most languages, namely C, C++, ObjectiveC, Shell, Python, Lisp, EmacsLisp, librep, Java, C#, awk, Tcl, Perl, PHP, GCC-source, Glade, Lua, JavaScript, Vala, GSettings, Desktop.
The default keyword specifications, which are always looked for if not explicitly disabled, are language dependent. They are:
gettext, dgettext:2,
dcgettext:2, ngettext:1,2, dngettext:2,3,
dcngettext:2,3, gettext_noop, and pgettext:1c,2,
dpgettext:2c,3, dcpgettext:2c,3, npgettext:1c,2,3,
dnpgettext:2c,3,4, dcnpgettext:2c,3,4.
NSLocalizedString, _,
NSLocalizedStaticString, __.
gettext, ngettext:1,2, eval_gettext,
eval_ngettext:1,2, eval_pgettext:1c,2,
eval_npgettext:1c,2,3.
gettext, ugettext, dgettext:2,
ngettext:1,2, ungettext:1,2, dngettext:2,3, _.
gettext, ngettext:1,2, gettext-noop.
_.
_.
gettext, ngettext:1,2, gettext-noop.
GettextResource.gettext:2,
GettextResource.ngettext:2,3, GettextResource.pgettext:2c,3,
GettextResource.npgettext:2c,3,4, gettext, ngettext:1,2,
pgettext:1c,2, npgettext:1c,2,3, getString.
GetString, GetPluralString:1,2,
GetParticularString:1c,2, GetParticularPluralString:1c,2,3.
dcgettext, dcngettext:1,2.
::msgcat::mc.
gettext, %gettext, $gettext, dgettext:2,
dcgettext:2, ngettext:1,2, dngettext:2,3,
dcngettext:2,3, gettext_noop.
_, gettext, dgettext:2, dcgettext:2,
ngettext:1,2, dngettext:2,3, dcngettext:2,3.
label, title, text, format,
copyright, comments, preview_text, tooltip.
_, gettext.gettext, gettext.dgettext:2,
gettext.dcgettext:2, gettext.ngettext:1,2,
gettext.dngettext:2,3, gettext.dcngettext:2,3.
_, gettext, dgettext:2,
dcgettext:2, ngettext:1,2, dngettext:2,3,
pgettext:1c,2, dpgettext:2c,3.
_, Q_, N_, NC_, dgettext:2,
dcgettext:2, ngettext:1,2, dngettext:2,3,
dpgettext:2c,3, dpgettext2:2c,3.
Name, GenericName, Comment,
Keywords.
To disable the default keyword specifications, the option ‘-k’ or ‘--keyword’ or ‘--keyword=’, without a keywordspec, can be used.
Specifies additional flags for strings occurring as part of the argth
argument of the function word. The possible flags are the possible
format string indicators, such as ‘c-format’, and their negations,
such as ‘no-c-format’, possibly prefixed with ‘pass-’.
The meaning of --flag=function:arg:lang-format
is that in language lang, the specified function expects as
argth argument a format string. (For those of you familiar with
GCC function attributes, --flag=function:arg:c-format is
roughly equivalent to the declaration
‘__attribute__ ((__format__ (__printf__, arg, ...)))’ attached
to function in a C source file.)
For example, if you use the ‘error’ function from GNU libc, you can
specify its behaviour through --flag=error:3:c-format. The effect of
this specification is that xgettext will mark as format strings all
gettext invocations that occur as argth argument of
function.
This is useful when such strings contain no format string directives:
together with the checks done by ‘msgfmt -c’ it will ensure that
translators cannot accidentally use format string directives that would
lead to a crash at runtime.
The meaning of --flag=function:arg:pass-lang-format
is that in language lang, if the function call occurs in a
position that must yield a format string, then its argth argument
must yield a format string of the same type as well. (If you know GCC
function attributes, the --flag=function:arg:pass-c-format
option is roughly equivalent to the declaration
‘__attribute__ ((__format_arg__ (arg)))’ attached to function
in a C source file.)
For example, if you use the ‘_’ shortcut for the gettext function,
you should use --flag=_:1:pass-c-format. The effect of this
specification is that xgettext will propagate a format string
requirement for a _("string") call to its first argument, the literal
"string", and thus mark it as a format string.
This is useful when such strings contain no format string directives:
together with the checks done by ‘msgfmt -c’ it will ensure that
translators cannot accidentally use format string directives that would
lead to a crash at runtime.
This option has an effect with most languages, namely C, C++, ObjectiveC,
Shell, Python, Lisp, EmacsLisp, librep, Scheme, Java, C#, awk, YCP, Tcl, Perl, PHP,
GCC-source, Lua, JavaScript, Vala.
Understand ANSI C trigraphs for input.
This option has an effect only with the languages C, C++, ObjectiveC.
Recognize Qt format strings.
This option has an effect only with the language C++.
Recognize KDE 4 format strings.
This option has an effect only with the language C++.
Recognize Boost format strings.
This option has an effect only with the language C++.
Use the flags c-format and possible-c-format to show who was
responsible for marking a message as a format string. The latter form is
used if the xgettext program decided, the former form is used if
the programmer prescribed it.
By default only the c-format form is used. The translator should
not have to care about these details.
This implementation of xgettext is able to process a few awkward
cases, like strings in preprocessor macros, ANSI concatenation of
adjacent strings, and escaped end of lines for continued strings.
Specify whether or when to use colors and other text attributes.
See The --color option for details.
Specify the CSS style rule file to use for --color.
See The --style option for details.
Always write an output file even if no message is defined.
Write the .po file using indented style.
Do not write ‘#: filename:line’ lines. Note that using this option makes it harder for technically skilled translators to understand each message’s context.
Generate ‘#: filename:line’ lines (default).
The optional type can be either ‘full’, ‘file’, or
‘never’. If it is not given or ‘full’, it generates the
lines with both file name and line number. If it is ‘file’, the
line number part is omitted. If it is ‘never’, it completely
suppresses the lines (same as --no-location).
Write out a strict Uniforum conforming PO file. Note that this Uniforum format should be avoided because it doesn’t support the GNU extensions.
Write out a Java ResourceBundle in Java .properties syntax. Note
that this file format doesn’t support plural forms and silently drops
obsolete messages.
Write out a NeXTstep/GNUstep localized resource file in .strings syntax.
Note that this file format doesn’t support plural forms.
Use ITS rules defined in file. Note that this is only effective with XML files.
Write out comments recognized by itstool (http://itstool.org). Note that this is only effective with XML files.
Set the output page width. Long strings in the output files will be split across multiple lines in order to ensure that each line’s width (= number of screen columns) is less or equal to the given number.
Do not break long message lines. Message lines whose width exceeds the output page width will not be split into several lines. Only file reference lines which are wider than the output page width will be split.
Generate sorted output (deprecated). Note that using this option makes it much harder for the translator to understand each message’s context.
Sort output by file location.
Don’t write header with ‘msgid ""’ entry.
This is useful for testing purposes because it eliminates a source
of variance for generated .gmo files. With --omit-header,
two invocations of xgettext on the same files with the same
options at different times are guaranteed to produce the same results.
Note that using this option will lead to an error if the resulting file would not entirely be in ASCII.
Set the copyright holder in the output. string should be the copyright holder of the surrounding package. (Note that the msgstr strings, extracted from the package’s sources, belong to the copyright holder of the package.) Translators are expected to transfer or disclaim the copyright for their translations, so that package maintainers can distribute them without legal risk. If string is empty, the output files are marked as being in the public domain; in this case, the translators are expected to disclaim their copyright, again so that package maintainers can distribute them without legal risk.
The default value for string is the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
simply because xgettext was first used in the GNU project.
Omit FSF copyright in output. This option is equivalent to ‘--copyright-holder=''’. It can be useful for packages outside the GNU project that want their translations to be in the public domain.
Set the package name in the header of the output.
Set the package version in the header of the output. This option has an effect only if the ‘--package-name’ option is also used.
Set the reporting address for msgid bugs. This is the email address or URL to which the translators shall report bugs in the untranslated strings:
It can be your email address, or a mailing list address where translators can write to without being subscribed, or the URL of a web page through which the translators can contact you.
The default value is empty, which means that translators will be clueless! Don’t forget to specify this option.
Use string (or "" if not specified) as prefix for msgstr values.
Use string (or "" if not specified) as suffix for msgstr values.
Next: Updating Existing PO Files, Previous: Making the PO Template File, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
When starting a new translation, the translator creates a file called LANG.po, as a copy of the package.pot template file with modifications in the initial comments (at the beginning of the file) and in the header entry (the first entry, near the beginning of the file).
The easiest way to do so is by use of the ‘msginit’ program. For example:
$ cd PACKAGE-VERSION $ cd po $ msginit
The alternative way is to do the copy and modifications by hand. To do so, the translator copies package.pot to LANG.po. Then she modifies the initial comments and the header entry of this file.
Next: Filling in the Header Entry, Up: Creating a New PO File [Contents][Index]
msginit Programmsginit [option]
The msginit program creates a new PO file, initializing the meta
information with values from the user’s environment.
Here are more details. The following header fields of a PO file are automatically filled, when possible.
The value is guessed from the configure script or any other files
in the current directory.
The value is taken from the PO-Creation-Data in the input POT
file, or the current date is used.
The value is taken from user’s password file entry and the mailer configuration files.
These values are set according to the current locale and the predefined list of translation teams.
These values are set according to the content of the POT file and the current locale. If the POT file contains charset=UTF-8, it means that the POT file contains non-ASCII characters, and we keep the UTF-8 encoding. Otherwise, when the POT file is plain ASCII, we use the locale’s encoding.
The value is first looked up from the embedded table.
As an experimental feature, you can instruct msginit to use the
information from Unicode CLDR, by setting the GETTEXTCLDRDIR
environment variable. The program will look for a file named
common/supplemental/plurals.xml under that directory. You can
get the CLDR data from http://cldr.unicode.org/.
Input POT file.
If no inputfile is given, the current directory is searched for the POT file. If it is ‘-’, standard input is read.
Write output to specified PO file.
If no output file is given, it depends on the ‘--locale’ option or the user’s locale setting. If it is ‘-’, the results are written to standard output.
Set target locale. ll should be a language code, and CC should
be a country code. The optional part .encoding specifies the encoding
of the locale; most often this part is .UTF-8.
The command ‘locale -a’ can be used to output a list
of all installed locales. The default is the user’s locale setting.
Declares that the PO file will not have a human translator and is instead automatically generated.
Specify whether or when to use colors and other text attributes.
See The --color option for details.
Specify the CSS style rule file to use for --color.
See The --style option for details.
Write out a Java ResourceBundle in Java .properties syntax. Note
that this file format doesn’t support plural forms and silently drops
obsolete messages.
Write out a NeXTstep/GNUstep localized resource file in .strings syntax.
Note that this file format doesn’t support plural forms.
Set the output page width. Long strings in the output files will be split across multiple lines in order to ensure that each line’s width (= number of screen columns) is less or equal to the given number.
Do not break long message lines. Message lines whose width exceeds the output page width will not be split into several lines. Only file reference lines which are wider than the output page width will be split.
Previous: Invoking the msginit Program, Up: Creating a New PO File [Contents][Index]
The initial comments "SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE", "YEAR" and "FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR" ought to be replaced by sensible information. This can be done in any text editor; if Emacs is used and it switched to PO mode automatically (because it has recognized the file’s suffix), you can disable it by typing M-x fundamental-mode.
Modifying the header entry can already be done using PO mode: in Emacs, type M-x po-mode RET and then RET again to start editing the entry. You should fill in the following fields.
This is the name and version of the package. Fill it in if it has not
already been filled in by xgettext.
This has already been filled in by xgettext. It contains an email
address or URL where you can report bugs in the untranslated strings:
This has already been filled in by xgettext.
You don’t need to fill this in. It will be filled by the PO file editor when you save the file.
Fill in your name and email address (without double quotes).
Fill in the English name of the language, and the email address or homepage URL of the language team you are part of.
Before starting a translation, it is a good idea to get in touch with your translation team, not only to make sure you don’t do duplicated work, but also to coordinate difficult linguistic issues.
In the Free Translation Project, each translation team has its own mailing list. The up-to-date list of teams can be found at the Free Translation Project’s homepage, https://translationproject.org/, in the "Teams" area.
Fill in the language code of the language. This can be in one of three forms:
The naming convention ‘ll_CC’ is also the way locales are named on systems based on GNU libc. But there are three important differences:
So, if your locale name is ‘de_DE.UTF-8’, the language specification in PO files is just ‘de’.
Replace ‘CHARSET’ with the character encoding used for your language,
in your locale, or UTF-8. This field is needed for correct operation of the
msgmerge and msgfmt programs, as well as for users whose
locale’s character encoding differs from yours (see How to specify the output character set gettext uses).
You get the character encoding of your locale by running the shell command ‘locale charmap’. If the result is ‘C’ or ‘ANSI_X3.4-1968’, which is equivalent to ‘ASCII’ (= ‘US-ASCII’), it means that your locale is not correctly configured. In this case, ask your translation team which charset to use. ‘ASCII’ is not usable for any language except Latin.
Because the PO files must be portable to operating systems with less advanced
internationalization facilities, the character encodings that can be used
are limited to those supported by both GNU libc and GNU
libiconv. These are:
ASCII, ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-2, ISO-8859-3,
ISO-8859-4, ISO-8859-5, ISO-8859-6, ISO-8859-7,
ISO-8859-8, ISO-8859-9, ISO-8859-13, ISO-8859-14,
ISO-8859-15,
KOI8-R, KOI8-U, KOI8-T,
CP850, CP866, CP874,
CP932, CP949, CP950, CP1250, CP1251,
CP1252, CP1253, CP1254, CP1255, CP1256,
CP1257, GB2312, EUC-JP, EUC-KR, EUC-TW,
BIG5, BIG5-HKSCS, GBK, GB18030, SHIFT_JIS,
JOHAB, TIS-620, VISCII, GEORGIAN-PS, UTF-8.
In the GNU system, the following encodings are frequently used for the corresponding languages.
ISO-8859-1 for
Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Cornish, Danish, Dutch,
English, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Galician, German,
Greenlandic, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Malay, Manx,
Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Uzbek,
Walloon,
ISO-8859-2 for
Bosnian, Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak,
Slovenian,
ISO-8859-3 for Maltese,
ISO-8859-5 for Macedonian, Serbian,
ISO-8859-6 for Arabic,
ISO-8859-7 for Greek,
ISO-8859-8 for Hebrew,
ISO-8859-9 for Turkish,
ISO-8859-13 for Latvian, Lithuanian, Maori,
ISO-8859-14 for Welsh,
ISO-8859-15 for
Basque, Catalan, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Irish,
Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Walloon,
KOI8-R for Russian,
KOI8-U for Ukrainian,
KOI8-T for Tajik,
CP1251 for Bulgarian, Belarusian,
GB2312, GBK, GB18030
for simplified writing of Chinese,
BIG5, BIG5-HKSCS
for traditional writing of Chinese,
EUC-JP for Japanese,
EUC-KR for Korean,
TIS-620 for Thai,
GEORGIAN-PS for Georgian,
UTF-8 for any language, including those listed above.
When single quote characters or double quote characters are used in translations for your language, and your locale’s encoding is one of the ISO-8859-* charsets, it is best if you create your PO files in UTF-8 encoding, instead of your locale’s encoding. This is because in UTF-8 the real quote characters can be represented (single quote characters: U+2018, U+2019, double quote characters: U+201C, U+201D), whereas none of ISO-8859-* charsets has them all. Users in UTF-8 locales will see the real quote characters, whereas users in ISO-8859-* locales will see the vertical apostrophe and the vertical double quote instead (because that’s what the character set conversion will transliterate them to).
To enter such quote characters under X11, you can change your keyboard
mapping using the xmodmap program. The X11 names of the quote
characters are "leftsinglequotemark", "rightsinglequotemark",
"leftdoublequotemark", "rightdoublequotemark", "singlelowquotemark",
"doublelowquotemark".
Note that only recent versions of GNU Emacs support the UTF-8 encoding: Emacs 20 with Mule-UCS, and Emacs 21. As of January 2001, XEmacs doesn’t support the UTF-8 encoding.
The character encoding name can be written in either upper or lower case. Usually upper case is preferred.
Set this to 8bit.
This field is optional. It is only needed if the PO file has plural forms. You can find them by searching for the ‘msgid_plural’ keyword. The format of the plural forms field is described in Additional functions for plural forms and Translating plural forms.
Next: Editing PO Files, Previous: Creating a New PO File, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
msgmerge Programmsgmerge [option] def.po ref.pot
The msgmerge program merges two Uniforum style .po files together.
The def.po file is an existing PO file with translations which will
be taken over to the newly created file as long as they still match;
comments will be preserved, but extracted comments and file positions will
be discarded. The ref.pot file is the last created PO file with
up-to-date source references but old translations, or a PO Template file
(generally created by xgettext); any translations or comments
in the file will be discarded, however dot comments and file positions
will be preserved. Where an exact match cannot be found, fuzzy matching
is used to produce better results.
Translations referring to old sources.
References to the new sources.
Add directory to the list of directories. Source files are searched relative to this list of directories. The resulting .po file will be written relative to the current directory, though.
Specify an additional library of message translations. See Using Translation Compendia. This option may be specified more than once.
Update def.po. Do nothing if def.po is already up to date.
Write output to specified file.
The results are written to standard output if no output file is specified or if it is ‘-’.
The result is written back to def.po.
The version control method may be selected via the --backup option
or through the VERSION_CONTROL environment variable. Here are the
values:
Never make backups (even if --backup is given).
Make numbered backups.
Make numbered backups if numbered backups for this file already exist, otherwise make simple backups.
Always make simple backups.
The backup suffix is ‘~’, unless set with --suffix or the
SIMPLE_BACKUP_SUFFIX environment variable.
Apply ref.pot to each of the domains in def.po.
Produce a PO file meant for msgfmt only, not for a translator.
This option omits untranslated messages, fuzzy messages (except the header
entry), and obsolete messages from the output. Also, it omits translator
comments and ‘#: filename:line’ lines from the output.
In particular, this option implies ‘--no-fuzzy-matching’.
Do not use fuzzy matching when an exact match is not found. This may speed up the operation considerably.
Keep the previous msgids of translated messages, marked with ‘#|’, when adding the fuzzy marker to such messages.
Specify the ‘Language’ field to be used in the header entry. See Filling in the Header Entry for the meaning of this field. Note: The ‘Language-Team’ and ‘Plural-Forms’ fields are left unchanged. If this option is not specified, the ‘Language’ field is inferred, as best as possible, from the ‘Language-Team’ field.
Specify whether or when to use colors and other text attributes.
See The --color option for details.
Specify the CSS style rule file to use for --color.
See The --style option for details.
Always write an output file even if it contains no message.
Write the .po file using indented style.
Do not write ‘#: filename:line’ lines.
Generate ‘#: filename:line’ lines (default).
The optional type can be either ‘full’, ‘file’, or
‘never’. If it is not given or ‘full’, it generates the
lines with both file name and line number. If it is ‘file’, the
line number part is omitted. If it is ‘never’, it completely
suppresses the lines (same as --no-location).
Write out a strict Uniforum conforming PO file. Note that this Uniforum format should be avoided because it doesn’t support the GNU extensions.
Write out a Java ResourceBundle in Java .properties syntax. Note
that this file format doesn’t support plural forms and silently drops
obsolete messages.
Write out a NeXTstep/GNUstep localized resource file in .strings syntax.
Note that this file format doesn’t support plural forms.
Set the output page width. Long strings in the output files will be split across multiple lines in order to ensure that each line’s width (= number of screen columns) is less or equal to the given number.
Do not break long message lines. Message lines whose width exceeds the output page width will not be split into several lines. Only file reference lines which are wider than the output page width will be split.
Generate sorted output. Note that using this option makes it much harder for the translator to understand each message’s context.
Sort output by file location.
Next: Manipulating PO Files, Previous: Updating Existing PO Files, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
Next: Emacs’s PO File Editor, Previous: KDE’s PO File Editor, Up: Editing PO Files [Contents][Index]
Next: Using Translation Compendia, Previous: GNOME’s PO File Editor, Up: Editing PO Files [Contents][Index]
For those of you being the lucky users of Emacs, PO mode has been specifically created for providing a cozy environment for editing or modifying PO files. While editing a PO file, PO mode allows for the easy browsing of auxiliary and compendium PO files, as well as for following references into the set of C program sources from which PO files have been derived. It has a few special features, among which are the interactive marking of program strings as translatable, and the validation of PO files with easy repositioning to PO file lines showing errors.
For the beginning, besides main PO mode commands (see Main PO mode Commands), you should know how to move between entries (see Entry Positioning), and how to handle untranslated entries (see Untranslated Entries).
gettext InstallationNext: Main PO mode Commands, Up: Emacs’s PO File Editor [Contents][Index]
gettext InstallationOnce you have received, unpacked, configured and compiled the GNU
gettext distribution, the ‘make install’ command puts in
place the programs xgettext, msgfmt, gettext, and
msgmerge, as well as their available message catalogs. To
top off a comfortable installation, you might also want to make the
PO mode available to your Emacs users.
During the installation of the PO mode, you might want to modify your file .emacs, once and for all, so it contains a few lines looking like:
(setq auto-mode-alist
(cons '("\\.po\\'\\|\\.po\\." . po-mode) auto-mode-alist))
(autoload 'po-mode "po-mode" "Major mode for translators to edit PO files" t)
Later, whenever you edit some .po file, or any file having the string ‘.po.’ within its name, Emacs loads po-mode.elc (or po-mode.el) as needed, and automatically activates PO mode commands for the associated buffer. The string PO appears in the mode line for any buffer for which PO mode is active. Many PO files may be active at once in a single Emacs session.
If you are using Emacs version 20 or newer, and have already installed the appropriate international fonts on your system, you may also tell Emacs how to determine automatically the coding system of every PO file. This will often (but not always) cause the necessary fonts to be loaded and used for displaying the translations on your Emacs screen. For this to happen, add the lines:
(modify-coding-system-alist 'file "\\.po\\'\\|\\.po\\."
'po-find-file-coding-system)
(autoload 'po-find-file-coding-system "po-mode")
to your .emacs file. If, with this, you still see boxes instead of international characters, try a different font set (via Shift Mouse button 1).
Next: Entry Positioning, Previous: Completing GNU gettext Installation, Up: Emacs’s PO File Editor [Contents][Index]
After setting up Emacs with something similar to the lines in
Completing GNU gettext Installation, PO mode is activated for a window when Emacs finds a
PO file in that window. This puts the window read-only and establishes a
po-mode-map, which is a genuine Emacs mode, in a way that is not derived
from text mode in any way. Functions found on po-mode-hook,
if any, will be executed.
When PO mode is active in a window, the letters ‘PO’ appear in the mode line for that window. The mode line also displays how many entries of each kind are held in the PO file. For example, the string ‘132t+3f+10u+2o’ would tell the translator that the PO mode contains 132 translated entries (see Translated Entries, 3 fuzzy entries (see Fuzzy Entries), 10 untranslated entries (see Untranslated Entries) and 2 obsolete entries (see Obsolete Entries). Zero-coefficients items are not shown. So, in this example, if the fuzzy entries were unfuzzied, the untranslated entries were translated and the obsolete entries were deleted, the mode line would merely display ‘145t’ for the counters.
The main PO commands are those which do not fit into the other categories of subsequent sections. These allow for quitting PO mode or for managing windows in special ways.
Undo last modification to the PO file (po-undo).
Quit processing and save the PO file (po-quit).
Quit processing, possibly after confirmation (po-confirm-and-quit).
Temporary leave the PO file window (po-other-window).
Show help about PO mode (po-help).
Give some PO file statistics (po-statistics).
Batch validate the format of the whole PO file (po-validate).
The command _ (po-undo) interfaces to the Emacs
undo facility. See Undoing Changes in The Emacs
Editor. Each time _ is typed, modifications which the translator
did to the PO file are undone a little more. For the purpose of
undoing, each PO mode command is atomic. This is especially true for
the RET command: the whole edition made by using a single
use of this command is undone at once, even if the edition itself
implied several actions. However, while in the editing window, one
can undo the edition work quite parsimoniously.
The commands Q (po-quit) and q
(po-confirm-and-quit) are used when the translator is done with the
PO file. The former is a bit less verbose than the latter. If the file
has been modified, it is saved to disk first. In both cases, and prior to
all this, the commands check if any untranslated messages remain in the
PO file and, if so, the translator is asked if she really wants to leave
off working with this PO file. This is the preferred way of getting rid
of an Emacs PO file buffer. Merely killing it through the usual command
C-x k (kill-buffer) is not the tidiest way to proceed.
The command 0 (po-other-window) is another, softer way,
to leave PO mode, temporarily. It just moves the cursor to some other
Emacs window, and pops one if necessary. For example, if the translator
just got PO mode to show some source context in some other, she might
discover some apparent bug in the program source that needs correction.
This command allows the translator to change sex, become a programmer,
and have the cursor right into the window containing the program she
(or rather he) wants to modify. By later getting the cursor back
in the PO file window, or by asking Emacs to edit this file once again,
PO mode is then recovered.
The command h (po-help) displays a summary of all available PO
mode commands. The translator should then type any character to resume
normal PO mode operations. The command ? has the same effect
as h.
The command = (po-statistics) computes the total number of
entries in the PO file, the ordinal of the current entry (counted from
1), the number of untranslated entries, the number of obsolete entries,
and displays all these numbers.
The command V (po-validate) launches msgfmt in
checking and verbose
mode over the current PO file. This command first offers to save the
current PO file on disk. The msgfmt tool, from GNU gettext,
has the purpose of creating a MO file out of a PO file, and PO mode uses
the features of this program for checking the overall format of a PO file,
as well as all individual entries.
The program msgfmt runs asynchronously with Emacs, so the
translator regains control immediately while her PO file is being studied.
Error output is collected in the Emacs ‘*compilation*’ buffer,
displayed in another window. The regular Emacs command C-x`
(next-error), as well as other usual compile commands, allow the
translator to reposition quickly to the offending parts of the PO file.
Once the cursor is on the line in error, the translator may decide on
any PO mode action which would help correcting the error.
Next: Normalizing Strings in Entries, Previous: Main PO mode Commands, Up: Emacs’s PO File Editor [Contents][Index]
The cursor in a PO file window is almost always part of an entry. The only exceptions are the special case when the cursor is after the last entry in the file, or when the PO file is empty. The entry where the cursor is found to be is said to be the current entry. Many PO mode commands operate on the current entry, so moving the cursor does more than allowing the translator to browse the PO file, this also selects on which entry commands operate.
Some PO mode commands alter the position of the cursor in a specialized way. A few of those special purpose positioning are described here, the others are described in following sections (for a complete list try C-h m):
Redisplay the current entry (po-current-entry).
Select the entry after the current one (po-next-entry).
Select the entry before the current one (po-previous-entry).
Select the first entry in the PO file (po-first-entry).
Select the last entry in the PO file (po-last-entry).
Record the location of the current entry for later use
(po-push-location).
Return to a previously saved entry location (po-pop-location).
Exchange the current entry location with the previously saved one
(po-exchange-location).
Any Emacs command able to reposition the cursor may be used
to select the current entry in PO mode, including commands which
move by characters, lines, paragraphs, screens or pages, and search
commands. However, there is a kind of standard way to display the
current entry in PO mode, which usual Emacs commands moving
the cursor do not especially try to enforce. The command .
(po-current-entry) has the sole purpose of redisplaying the
current entry properly, after the current entry has been changed by
means external to PO mode, or the Emacs screen otherwise altered.
It is yet to be decided if PO mode helps the translator, or otherwise irritates her, by forcing a rigid window disposition while she is doing her work. We originally had quite precise ideas about how windows should behave, but on the other hand, anyone used to Emacs is often happy to keep full control. Maybe a fixed window disposition might be offered as a PO mode option that the translator might activate or deactivate at will, so it could be offered on an experimental basis. If nobody feels a real need for using it, or a compulsion for writing it, we should drop this whole idea. The incentive for doing it should come from translators rather than programmers, as opinions from an experienced translator are surely more worth to me than opinions from programmers thinking about how others should do translation.
The commands n (po-next-entry) and p
(po-previous-entry) move the cursor the entry following,
or preceding, the current one. If n is given while the
cursor is on the last entry of the PO file, or if p
is given while the cursor is on the first entry, no move is done.
The commands < (po-first-entry) and >
(po-last-entry) move the cursor to the first entry, or last
entry, of the PO file. When the cursor is located past the last
entry in a PO file, most PO mode commands will return an error saying
‘After last entry’. Moreover, the commands < and >
have the special property of being able to work even when the cursor
is not into some PO file entry, and one may use them for nicely
correcting this situation. But even these commands will fail on a
truly empty PO file. There are development plans for the PO mode for it
to interactively fill an empty PO file from sources. See Marking Translatable Strings.
The translator may decide, before working at the translation of a particular entry, that she needs to browse the remainder of the PO file, maybe for finding the terminology or phraseology used in related entries. She can of course use the standard Emacs idioms for saving the current cursor location in some register, and use that register for getting back, or else, use the location ring.
PO mode offers another approach, by which cursor locations may be saved
onto a special stack. The command m (po-push-location)
merely adds the location of current entry to the stack, pushing
the already saved locations under the new one. The command
r (po-pop-location) consumes the top stack element and
repositions the cursor to the entry associated with that top element.
This position is then lost, for the next r will move the cursor
to the previously saved location, and so on until no locations remain
on the stack.
If the translator wants the position to be kept on the location stack, maybe for taking a look at the entry associated with the top element, then go elsewhere with the intent of getting back later, she ought to use m immediately after r.
The command x (po-exchange-location) simultaneously
repositions the cursor to the entry associated with the top element of
the stack of saved locations, and replaces that top element with the
location of the current entry before the move. Consequently, repeating
the x command toggles alternatively between two entries.
For achieving this, the translator will position the cursor on the
first entry, use m, then position to the second entry, and
merely use x for making the switch.
Next: Translated Entries, Previous: Entry Positioning, Up: Emacs’s PO File Editor [Contents][Index]
There are many different ways for encoding a particular string into a
PO file entry, because there are so many different ways to split and
quote multi-line strings, and even, to represent special characters
by backslashed escaped sequences. Some features of PO mode rely on
the ability for PO mode to scan an already existing PO file for a
particular string encoded into the msgid field of some entry.
Even if PO mode has internally all the built-in machinery for
implementing this recognition easily, doing it fast is technically
difficult. To facilitate a solution to this efficiency problem,
we decided on a canonical representation for strings.
A conventional representation of strings in a PO file is currently
under discussion, and PO mode experiments with a canonical representation.
Having both xgettext and PO mode converging towards a uniform
way of representing equivalent strings would be useful, as the internal
normalization needed by PO mode could be automatically satisfied
when using xgettext from GNU gettext. An explicit
PO mode normalization should then be only necessary for PO files
imported from elsewhere, or for when the convention itself evolves.
So, for achieving normalization of at least the strings of a given PO file needing a canonical representation, the following PO mode command is available:
Tidy the whole PO file by making entries more uniform.
The special command M-x po-normalize, which has no associated
keys, revises all entries, ensuring that strings of both original
and translated entries use uniform internal quoting in the PO file.
It also removes any crumb after the last entry. This command may be
useful for PO files freshly imported from elsewhere, or if we ever
improve on the canonical quoting format we use. This canonical format
is not only meant for getting cleaner PO files, but also for greatly
speeding up msgid string lookup for some other PO mode commands.
M-x po-normalize presently makes three passes over the entries.
The first implements heuristics for converting PO files for GNU
gettext 0.6 and earlier, in which msgid and msgstr
fields were using K&R style C string syntax for multi-line strings.
These heuristics may fail for comments not related to obsolete
entries and ending with a backslash; they also depend on subsequent
passes for finalizing the proper commenting of continued lines for
obsolete entries. This first pass might disappear once all oldish PO
files would have been adjusted. The second and third pass normalize
all msgid and msgstr strings respectively. They also
clean out those trailing backslashes used by XView’s msgfmt
for continued lines.
Having such an explicit normalizing command allows for importing PO
files from other sources, but also eases the evolution of the current
convention, evolution driven mostly by aesthetic concerns, as of now.
It is easy to make suggested adjustments at a later time, as the
normalizing command and eventually, other GNU gettext tools
should greatly automate conformance. A description of the canonical
string format is given below, for the particular benefit of those not
having Emacs handy, and who would nevertheless want to handcraft
their PO files in nice ways.
Right now, in PO mode, strings are single line or multi-line. A string goes multi-line if and only if it has embedded newlines, that is, if it matches ‘[^\n]\n+[^\n]’. So, we would have:
msgstr "\n\nHello, world!\n\n\n"
but, replacing the space by a newline, this becomes:
msgstr "" "\n" "\n" "Hello,\n" "world!\n" "\n" "\n"
We are deliberately using a caricatural example, here, to make the point clearer. Usually, multi-lines are not that bad looking. It is probable that we will implement the following suggestion. We might lump together all initial newlines into the empty string, and also all newlines introducing empty lines (that is, for n > 1, the n-1’th last newlines would go together on a separate string), so making the previous example appear:
msgstr "\n\n" "Hello,\n" "world!\n" "\n\n"
There are a few yet undecided little points about string normalization, to be documented in this manual, once these questions settle.
Next: Fuzzy Entries, Previous: Normalizing Strings in Entries, Up: Emacs’s PO File Editor [Contents][Index]
Each PO file entry for which the msgstr field has been filled with
a translation, and which is not marked as fuzzy (see Fuzzy Entries),
is said to be a translated entry. Only translated entries will
later be compiled by GNU msgfmt and become usable in programs.
Other entry types will be excluded; translation will not occur for them.
Some commands are more specifically related to translated entry processing.
Find the next translated entry (po-next-translated-entry).
Find the previous translated entry (po-previous-translated-entry).
The commands t (po-next-translated-entry) and T
(po-previous-translated-entry) move forwards or backwards, chasing
for an translated entry. If none is found, the search is extended and
wraps around in the PO file buffer.
Translated entries usually result from the translator having edited in
a translation for them, Modifying Translations. However, if the
variable po-auto-fuzzy-on-edit is not nil, the entry having
received a new translation first becomes a fuzzy entry, which ought to
be later unfuzzied before becoming an official, genuine translated entry.
See Fuzzy Entries.
Next: Untranslated Entries, Previous: Translated Entries, Up: Emacs’s PO File Editor [Contents][Index]
Each PO file entry may have a set of attributes, which are
qualities given a name and explicitly associated with the translation,
using a special system comment. One of these attributes
has the name fuzzy, and entries having this attribute are said
to have a fuzzy translation. They are called fuzzy entries, for short.
Fuzzy entries, even if they account for translated entries for
most other purposes, usually call for revision by the translator.
Those may be produced by applying the program msgmerge to
update an older translated PO files according to a new PO template
file, when this tool hypothesises that some new msgid has
been modified only slightly out of an older one, and chooses to pair
what it thinks to be the old translation for the new modified entry.
The slight alteration in the original string (the msgid string)
should often be reflected in the translated string, and this requires
the intervention of the translator. For this reason, msgmerge
might mark some entries as being fuzzy.
Also, the translator may decide herself to mark an entry as fuzzy for her own convenience, when she wants to remember that the entry has to be later revisited. So, some commands are more specifically related to fuzzy entry processing.
Find the next fuzzy entry (po-next-fuzzy-entry).
Find the previous fuzzy entry (po-previous-fuzzy-entry).
Remove the fuzzy attribute of the current entry (po-unfuzzy).
The commands f (po-next-fuzzy-entry) and F
(po-previous-fuzzy-entry) move forwards or backwards, chasing for
a fuzzy entry. If none is found, the search is extended and wraps
around in the PO file buffer.
The command TAB (po-unfuzzy) removes the fuzzy
attribute associated with an entry, usually leaving it translated.
Further, if the variable po-auto-select-on-unfuzzy has not
the nil value, the TAB command will automatically chase
for another interesting entry to work on. The initial value of
po-auto-select-on-unfuzzy is nil.
The initial value of po-auto-fuzzy-on-edit is nil. However,
if the variable po-auto-fuzzy-on-edit is set to t, any entry
edited through the RET command is marked fuzzy, as a way to
ensure some kind of double check, later. In this case, the usual paradigm
is that an entry becomes fuzzy (if not already) whenever the translator
modifies it. If she is satisfied with the translation, she then uses
TAB to pick another entry to work on, clearing the fuzzy attribute
on the same blow. If she is not satisfied yet, she merely uses SPC
to chase another entry, leaving the entry fuzzy.
The translator may also use the DEL command
(po-fade-out-entry) over any translated entry to mark it as being
fuzzy, when she wants to easily leave a trace she wants to later return
working at this entry.
Also, when time comes to quit working on a PO file buffer with the q command, the translator is asked for confirmation, if fuzzy string still exists.
Next: Obsolete Entries, Previous: Fuzzy Entries, Up: Emacs’s PO File Editor [Contents][Index]
When xgettext originally creates a PO file, unless told
otherwise, it initializes the msgid field with the untranslated
string, and leaves the msgstr string to be empty. Such entries,
having an empty translation, are said to be untranslated entries.
Later, when the programmer slightly modifies some string right in
the program, this change is later reflected in the PO file
by the appearance of a new untranslated entry for the modified string.
The usual commands moving from entry to entry consider untranslated entries on the same level as active entries. Untranslated entries are easily recognizable by the fact they end with ‘msgstr ""’.
The work of the translator might be (quite naively) seen as the process of seeking for an untranslated entry, editing a translation for it, and repeating these actions until no untranslated entries remain. Some commands are more specifically related to untranslated entry processing.
Find the next untranslated entry (po-next-untranslated-entry).
Find the previous untranslated entry (po-previous-untransted-entry).
Turn the current entry into an untranslated one (po-kill-msgstr).
The commands u (po-next-untranslated-entry) and U
(po-previous-untransted-entry) move forwards or backwards,
chasing for an untranslated entry. If none is found, the search is
extended and wraps around in the PO file buffer.
An entry can be turned back into an untranslated entry by
merely emptying its translation, using the command k
(po-kill-msgstr). See Modifying Translations.
Also, when time comes to quit working on a PO file buffer with the q command, the translator is asked for confirmation, if some untranslated string still exists.
Next: Modifying Translations, Previous: Untranslated Entries, Up: Emacs’s PO File Editor [Contents][Index]
By obsolete PO file entries, we mean those entries which are
commented out, usually by msgmerge when it found that the
translation is not needed anymore by the package being localized.
The usual commands moving from entry to entry consider obsolete
entries on the same level as active entries. Obsolete entries are
easily recognizable by the fact that all their lines start with
#, even those lines containing msgid or msgstr.
Commands exist for emptying the translation or reinitializing it to the original untranslated string. Commands interfacing with the kill ring may force some previously saved text into the translation. The user may interactively edit the translation. All these commands may apply to obsolete entries, carefully leaving the entry obsolete after the fact.
Moreover, some commands are more specifically related to obsolete entry processing.
Find the next obsolete entry (po-next-obsolete-entry).
Find the previous obsolete entry (po-previous-obsolete-entry).
Make an active entry obsolete, or zap out an obsolete entry
(po-fade-out-entry).
The commands o (po-next-obsolete-entry) and O
(po-previous-obsolete-entry) move forwards or backwards,
chasing for an obsolete entry. If none is found, the search is
extended and wraps around in the PO file buffer.
PO mode does not provide ways for un-commenting an obsolete entry
and making it active, because this would reintroduce an original
untranslated string which does not correspond to any marked string
in the program sources. This goes with the philosophy of never
introducing useless msgid values.
However, it is possible to comment out an active entry, so making
it obsolete. GNU gettext utilities will later react to the
disappearance of a translation by using the untranslated string.
The command DEL (po-fade-out-entry) pushes the current entry
a little further towards annihilation. If the entry is active (it is a
translated entry), then it is first made fuzzy. If it is already fuzzy,
then the entry is merely commented out, with confirmation. If the entry
is already obsolete, then it is completely deleted from the PO file.
It is easy to recycle the translation so deleted into some other PO file
entry, usually one which is untranslated. See Modifying Translations.
Here is a quite interesting problem to solve for later development of PO mode, for those nights you are not sleepy. The idea would be that PO mode might become bright enough, one of these days, to make good guesses at retrieving the most probable candidate, among all obsolete entries, for initializing the translation of a newly appeared string. I think it might be a quite hard problem to do this algorithmically, as we have to develop good and efficient measures of string similarity. Right now, PO mode completely lets the decision to the translator, when the time comes to find the adequate obsolete translation, it merely tries to provide handy tools for helping her to do so.
Next: Modifying Comments, Previous: Obsolete Entries, Up: Emacs’s PO File Editor [Contents][Index]
PO mode prevents direct modification of the PO file, by the usual means Emacs gives for altering a buffer’s contents. By doing so, it pretends helping the translator to avoid little clerical errors about the overall file format, or the proper quoting of strings, as those errors would be easily made. Other kinds of errors are still possible, but some may be caught and diagnosed by the batch validation process, which the translator may always trigger by the V command. For all other errors, the translator has to rely on her own judgment, and also on the linguistic reports submitted to her by the users of the translated package, having the same mother tongue.
When the time comes to create a translation, correct an error diagnosed mechanically or reported by a user, the translators have to resort to using the following commands for modifying the translations.
Interactively edit the translation (po-edit-msgstr).
Reinitialize the translation with the original, untranslated string
(po-msgid-to-msgstr).
Save the translation on the kill ring, and delete it (po-kill-msgstr).
Save the translation on the kill ring, without deleting it
(po-kill-ring-save-msgstr).
Replace the translation, taking the new from the kill ring
(po-yank-msgstr).
The command RET (po-edit-msgstr) opens a new Emacs
window meant to edit in a new translation, or to modify an already existing
translation. The new window contains a copy of the translation taken from
the current PO file entry, all ready for edition, expunged of all quoting
marks, fully modifiable and with the complete extent of Emacs modifying
commands. When the translator is done with her modifications, she may use
C-c C-c to close the subedit window with the automatically requoted
results, or C-c C-k to abort her modifications. See Details of Sub Edition,
for more information.
The command LFD (po-msgid-to-msgstr) initializes, or
reinitializes the translation with the original string. This command is
normally used when the translator wants to redo a fresh translation of
the original string, disregarding any previous work.
It is possible to arrange so, whenever editing an untranslated
entry, the LFD command be automatically executed. If you set
po-auto-edit-with-msgid to t, the translation gets
initialised with the original string, in case none exists already.
The default value for po-auto-edit-with-msgid is nil.
In fact, whether it is best to start a translation with an empty string, or rather with a copy of the original string, is a matter of taste or habit. Sometimes, the source language and the target language are so different that is simply best to start writing on an empty page. At other times, the source and target languages are so close that it would be a waste to retype a number of words already being written in the original string. A translator may also like having the original string right under her eyes, as she will progressively overwrite the original text with the translation, even if this requires some extra editing work to get rid of the original.
The command k (po-kill-msgstr) merely empties the
translation string, so turning the entry into an untranslated
one. But while doing so, its previous contents is put apart in
a special place, known as the kill ring. The command w
(po-kill-ring-save-msgstr) has also the effect of taking a
copy of the translation onto the kill ring, but it otherwise leaves
the entry alone, and does not remove the translation from the
entry. Both commands use exactly the Emacs kill ring, which is shared
between buffers, and which is well known already to Emacs lovers.
The translator may use k or w many times in the course of her work, as the kill ring may hold several saved translations. From the kill ring, strings may later be reinserted in various Emacs buffers. In particular, the kill ring may be used for moving translation strings between different entries of a single PO file buffer, or if the translator is handling many such buffers at once, even between PO files.
To facilitate exchanges with buffers which are not in PO mode, the translation string put on the kill ring by the k command is fully unquoted before being saved: external quotes are removed, multi-line strings are concatenated, and backslash escaped sequences are turned into their corresponding characters. In the special case of obsolete entries, the translation is also uncommented prior to saving.
The command y (po-yank-msgstr) completely replaces the
translation of the current entry by a string taken from the kill ring.
Following Emacs terminology, we then say that the replacement
string is yanked into the PO file buffer.
See Yanking in The Emacs Editor.
The first time y is used, the translation receives the value of
the most recent addition to the kill ring. If y is typed once
again, immediately, without intervening keystrokes, the translation
just inserted is taken away and replaced by the second most recent
addition to the kill ring. By repeating y many times in a row,
the translator may travel along the kill ring for saved strings,
until she finds the string she really wanted.
When a string is yanked into a PO file entry, it is fully and automatically requoted for complying with the format PO files should have. Further, if the entry is obsolete, PO mode then appropriately push the inserted string inside comments. Once again, translators should not burden themselves with quoting considerations besides, of course, the necessity of the translated string itself respective to the program using it.
Note that k or w are not the only commands pushing strings on the kill ring, as almost any PO mode command replacing translation strings (or the translator comments) automatically saves the old string on the kill ring. The main exceptions to this general rule are the yanking commands themselves.
To better illustrate the operation of killing and yanking, let’s
use an actual example, taken from a common situation. When the
programmer slightly modifies some string right in the program, his
change is later reflected in the PO file by the appearance
of a new untranslated entry for the modified string, and the fact
that the entry translating the original or unmodified string becomes
obsolete. In many cases, the translator might spare herself some work
by retrieving the unmodified translation from the obsolete entry,
then initializing the untranslated entry msgstr field with
this retrieved translation. Once this done, the obsolete entry is
not wanted anymore, and may be safely deleted.
When the translator finds an untranslated entry and suspects that a
slight variant of the translation exists, she immediately uses m
to mark the current entry location, then starts chasing obsolete
entries with o, hoping to find some translation corresponding
to the unmodified string. Once found, she uses the DEL command
for deleting the obsolete entry, knowing that DEL also kills
the translation, that is, pushes the translation on the kill ring.
Then, r returns to the initial untranslated entry, and y
then yanks the saved translation right into the msgstr
field. The translator is then free to use RET for fine
tuning the translation contents, and maybe to later use u,
then m again, for going on with the next untranslated string.
When some sequence of keys has to be typed over and over again, the translator may find it useful to become better acquainted with the Emacs capability of learning these sequences and playing them back under request. See Keyboard Macros in The Emacs Editor.
Next: Details of Sub Edition, Previous: Modifying Translations, Up: Emacs’s PO File Editor [Contents][Index]
Any translation work done seriously will raise many linguistic difficulties, for which decisions have to be made, and the choices further documented. These documents may be saved within the PO file in form of translator comments, which the translator is free to create, delete, or modify at will. These comments may be useful to herself when she returns to this PO file after a while.
Comments not having whitespace after the initial ‘#’, for example,
those beginning with ‘#.’ or ‘#:’, are not translator
comments, they are exclusively created by other gettext tools.
So, the commands below will never alter such system added comments,
they are not meant for the translator to modify. See The Format of PO Files.
The following commands are somewhat similar to those modifying translations, so the general indications given for those apply here. See Modifying Translations.
Interactively edit the translator comments (po-edit-comment).
Save the translator comments on the kill ring, and delete it
(po-kill-comment).
Save the translator comments on the kill ring, without deleting it
(po-kill-ring-save-comment).
Replace the translator comments, taking the new from the kill ring
(po-yank-comment).
These commands parallel PO mode commands for modifying the translation strings, and behave much the same way as they do, except that they handle this part of PO file comments meant for translator usage, rather than the translation strings. So, if the descriptions given below are slightly succinct, it is because the full details have already been given. See Modifying Translations.
The command # (po-edit-comment) opens a new Emacs window
containing a copy of the translator comments on the current PO file entry.
If there are no such comments, PO mode understands that the translator wants
to add a comment to the entry, and she is presented with an empty screen.
Comment marks (#) and the space following them are automatically
removed before edition, and reinstated after. For translator comments
pertaining to obsolete entries, the uncommenting and recommenting operations
are done twice. Once in the editing window, the keys C-c C-c
allow the translator to tell she is finished with editing the comment.
See Details of Sub Edition, for further details.
Functions found on po-subedit-mode-hook, if any, are executed after
the string has been inserted in the edit buffer.
The command K (po-kill-comment) gets rid of all
translator comments, while saving those comments on the kill ring.
The command W (po-kill-ring-save-comment) takes
a copy of the translator comments on the kill ring, but leaves
them undisturbed in the current entry. The command Y
(po-yank-comment) completely replaces the translator comments
by a string taken at the front of the kill ring. When this command
is immediately repeated, the comments just inserted are withdrawn,
and replaced by other strings taken along the kill ring.
On the kill ring, all strings have the same nature. There is no distinction between translation strings and translator comments strings. So, for example, let’s presume the translator has just finished editing a translation, and wants to create a new translator comment to document why the previous translation was not good, just to remember what was the problem. Foreseeing that she will do that in her documentation, the translator may want to quote the previous translation in her translator comments. To do so, she may initialize the translator comments with the previous translation, still at the head of the kill ring. Because editing already pushed the previous translation on the kill ring, she merely has to type M-w prior to #, and the previous translation will be right there, all ready for being introduced by some explanatory text.
On the other hand, presume there are some translator comments already
and that the translator wants to add to those comments, instead
of wholly replacing them. Then, she should edit the comment right
away with #. Once inside the editing window, she can use the
regular Emacs commands C-y (yank) and M-y
(yank-pop) to get the previous translation where she likes.
Next: C Sources Context, Previous: Modifying Comments, Up: Emacs’s PO File Editor [Contents][Index]
The PO subedit minor mode has a few peculiarities worth being described in fuller detail. It installs a few commands over the usual editing set of Emacs, which are described below.
Complete edition (po-subedit-exit).
Abort edition (po-subedit-abort).
Consult auxiliary PO files (po-subedit-cycle-auxiliary).
The window’s contents represents a translation for a given message,
or a translator comment. The translator may modify this window to
her heart’s content. Once this is done, the command C-c C-c
(po-subedit-exit) may be used to return the edited translation into
the PO file, replacing the original translation, even if it moved out of
sight or if buffers were switched.
If the translator becomes unsatisfied with her translation or comment,
to the extent she prefers keeping what was existent prior to the
RET or # command, she may use the command C-c C-k
(po-subedit-abort) to merely get rid of edition, while preserving
the original translation or comment. Another way would be for her to exit
normally with C-c C-c, then type U once for undoing the
whole effect of last edition.
The command C-c C-a (po-subedit-cycle-auxiliary)
allows for glancing through translations
already achieved in other languages, directly while editing the current
translation. This may be quite convenient when the translator is fluent
at many languages, but of course, only makes sense when such completed
auxiliary PO files are already available to her (see Consulting Auxiliary PO Files).
Functions found on po-subedit-mode-hook, if any, are executed after
the string has been inserted in the edit buffer.
While editing her translation, the translator should pay attention to not
inserting unwanted RET (newline) characters at the end of
the translated string if those are not meant to be there, or to removing
such characters when they are required. Since these characters are not
visible in the editing buffer, they are easily introduced by mistake.
To help her, RET automatically puts the character <
at the end of the string being edited, but this < is not really
part of the string. On exiting the editing window with C-c C-c,
PO mode automatically removes such < and all whitespace added after
it. If the translator adds characters after the terminating <, it
looses its delimiting property and integrally becomes part of the string.
If she removes the delimiting <, then the edited string is taken
as is, with all trailing newlines, even if invisible. Also, if
the translated string ought to end itself with a genuine <, then
the delimiting < may not be removed; so the string should appear,
in the editing window, as ending with two < in a row.
When a translation (or a comment) is being edited, the translator may move the cursor back into the PO file buffer and freely move to other entries, browsing at will. If, with an edition pending, the translator wanders in the PO file buffer, she may decide to start modifying another entry. Each entry being edited has its own subedit buffer. It is possible to simultaneously edit the translation and the comment of a single entry, or to edit entries in different PO files, all at once. Typing RET on a field already being edited merely resumes that particular edit. Yet, the translator should better be comfortable at handling many Emacs windows!
Pending subedits may be completed or aborted in any order, regardless of how or when they were started. When many subedits are pending and the translator asks for quitting the PO file (with the q command), subedits are automatically resumed one at a time, so she may decide for each of them.
Next: Consulting Auxiliary PO Files, Previous: Details of Sub Edition, Up: Emacs’s PO File Editor [Contents][Index]
PO mode is particularly powerful when used with PO files
created through GNU gettext utilities, as those utilities
insert special comments in the PO files they generate.
Some of these special comments relate the PO file entry to
exactly where the untranslated string appears in the program sources.
When the translator gets to an untranslated entry, she is fairly often faced with an original string which is not as informative as it normally should be, being succinct, cryptic, or otherwise ambiguous. Before choosing how to translate the string, she needs to understand better what the string really means and how tight the translation has to be. Most of the time, when problems arise, the only way left to make her judgment is looking at the true program sources from where this string originated, searching for surrounding comments the programmer might have put in there, and looking around for helping clues of any kind.
Surely, when looking at program sources, the translator will receive more help if she is a fluent programmer. However, even if she is not versed in programming and feels a little lost in C code, the translator should not be shy at taking a look, once in a while. It is most probable that she will still be able to find some of the hints she needs. She will learn quickly to not feel uncomfortable in program code, paying more attention to programmer’s comments, variable and function names (if he dared choosing them well), and overall organization, than to the program code itself.
The following commands are meant to help the translator at getting program source context for a PO file entry.
Resume the display of a program source context, or cycle through them
(po-cycle-source-reference).
Display of a program source context selected by menu
(po-select-source-reference).
Add a directory to the search path for source files
(po-consider-source-path).
Delete a directory from the search path for source files
(po-ignore-source-path).
The commands s (po-cycle-source-reference) and M-s
(po-select-source-reference) both open another window displaying
some source program file, and already positioned in such a way that
it shows an actual use of the string to be translated. By doing
so, the command gives source program context for the string. But if
the entry has no source context references, or if all references
are unresolved along the search path for program sources, then the
command diagnoses this as an error.
Even if s (or M-s) opens a new window, the cursor stays in the PO file window. If the translator really wants to get into the program source window, she ought to do it explicitly, maybe by using command O.
When s is typed for the first time, or for a PO file entry which is different of the last one used for getting source context, then the command reacts by giving the first context available for this entry, if any. If some context has already been recently displayed for the current PO file entry, and the translator wandered off to do other things, typing s again will merely resume, in another window, the context last displayed. In particular, if the translator moved the cursor away from the context in the source file, the command will bring the cursor back to the context. By using s many times in a row, with no other commands intervening, PO mode will cycle to the next available contexts for this particular entry, getting back to the first context once the last has been shown.
The command M-s behaves differently. Instead of cycling through references, it lets the translator choose a particular reference among many, and displays that reference. It is best used with completion, if the translator types TAB immediately after M-s, in response to the question, she will be offered a menu of all possible references, as a reminder of which are the acceptable answers. This command is useful only where there are really many contexts available for a single string to translate.
Program source files are usually found relative to where the PO
file stands. As a special provision, when this fails, the file is
also looked for, but relative to the directory immediately above it.
Those two cases take proper care of most PO files. However, it might
happen that a PO file has been moved, or is edited in a different
place than its normal location. When this happens, the translator
should tell PO mode in which directory normally sits the genuine PO
file. Many such directories may be specified, and all together, they
constitute what is called the search path for program sources.
The command S (po-consider-source-path) is used to interactively
enter a new directory at the front of the search path, and the command
M-S (po-ignore-source-path) is used to select, with completion,
one of the directories she does not want anymore on the search path.
Previous: C Sources Context, Up: Emacs’s PO File Editor [Contents][Index]
PO mode is able to help the knowledgeable translator, being fluent in many languages, at taking advantage of translations already achieved in other languages she just happens to know. It provides these other language translations as additional context for her own work. Moreover, it has features to ease the production of translations for many languages at once, for translators preferring to work in this way.
An auxiliary PO file is an existing PO file meant for the same package the translator is working on, but targeted to a different mother tongue language. Commands exist for declaring and handling auxiliary PO files, and also for showing contexts for the entry under work.
Here are the auxiliary file commands available in PO mode.
Seek auxiliary files for another translation for the same entry
(po-cycle-auxiliary).
Switch to a particular auxiliary file (po-select-auxiliary).
Declare this PO file as an auxiliary file (po-consider-as-auxiliary).
Remove this PO file from the list of auxiliary files
(po-ignore-as-auxiliary).
Command A (po-consider-as-auxiliary) adds the current
PO file to the list of auxiliary files, while command M-A
(po-ignore-as-auxiliary just removes it.
The command a (po-cycle-auxiliary) seeks all auxiliary PO
files, round-robin, searching for a translated entry in some other language
having an msgid field identical as the one for the current entry.
The found PO file, if any, takes the place of the current PO file in
the display (its window gets on top). Before doing so, the current PO
file is also made into an auxiliary file, if not already. So, a
in this newly displayed PO file will seek another PO file, and so on,
so repeating a will eventually yield back the original PO file.
The command C-c C-a (po-select-auxiliary) asks the translator
for her choice of a particular auxiliary file, with completion, and
then switches to that selected PO file. The command also checks if
the selected file has an msgid field identical as the one for
the current entry, and if yes, this entry becomes current. Otherwise,
the cursor of the selected file is left undisturbed.
For all this to work fully, auxiliary PO files will have to be normalized,
in that way that msgid fields should be written exactly
the same way. It is possible to write msgid fields in various
ways for representing the same string, different writing would break the
proper behaviour of the auxiliary file commands of PO mode. This is not
expected to be much a problem in practice, as most existing PO files have
their msgid entries written by the same GNU gettext tools.
However, PO files initially created by PO mode itself, while marking
strings in source files, are normalised differently. So are PO
files resulting of the ‘M-x normalize’ command. Until these
discrepancies between PO mode and other GNU gettext tools get
fully resolved, the translator should stay aware of normalisation issues.
Previous: Emacs’s PO File Editor, Up: Editing PO Files [Contents][Index]
A compendium is a special PO file containing a set of translations recurring in many different packages. The translator can use gettext tools to build a new compendium, to add entries to her compendium, and to initialize untranslated entries, or to update already translated entries, from translations kept in the compendium.
Next: Using Compendia, Up: Using Translation Compendia [Contents][Index]
Basically every PO file consisting of translated entries only can be declared as a valid compendium. Often the translator wants to have special compendia; let’s consider two cases: concatenating PO files and extracting a message subset from a PO file.
To concatenate several valid PO files into one compendium file you can use ‘msgcomm’ or ‘msgcat’ (the latter preferred):
msgcat -o compendium.po file1.po file2.po
By default, msgcat will accumulate divergent translations
for the same string. Those occurrences will be marked as fuzzy
and highly visible decorated; calling msgcat on
file1.po:
#: src/hello.c:200 #, c-format msgid "Report bugs to <%s>.\n" msgstr "Comunicar `bugs' a <%s>.\n"
and file2.po:
#: src/bye.c:100 #, c-format msgid "Report bugs to <%s>.\n" msgstr "Comunicar \"bugs\" a <%s>.\n"
will result in:
#: src/hello.c:200 src/bye.c:100 #, fuzzy, c-format msgid "Report bugs to <%s>.\n" msgstr "" "#-#-#-#-# file1.po #-#-#-#-#\n" "Comunicar `bugs' a <%s>.\n" "#-#-#-#-# file2.po #-#-#-#-#\n" "Comunicar \"bugs\" a <%s>.\n"
The translator will have to resolve this “conflict” manually; she
has to decide whether the first or the second version is appropriate
(or provide a new translation), to delete the “marker lines”, and
finally to remove the fuzzy mark.
If the translator knows in advance the first found translation of a message is always the best translation she can make use to the ‘--use-first’ switch:
msgcat --use-first -o compendium.po file1.po file2.po
A good compendium file must not contain fuzzy or untranslated
entries. If input files are “dirty” you must preprocess the input
files or postprocess the result using ‘msgattrib --translated --no-fuzzy’.
Nobody wants to translate the same messages again and again; thus you may wish to have a compendium file containing getopt.c messages.
To extract a message subset (e.g., all getopt.c messages) from an existing PO file into one compendium file you can use ‘msggrep’:
msggrep --location src/getopt.c -o compendium.po file.po
Previous: Creating Compendia, Up: Using Translation Compendia [Contents][Index]
You can use a compendium file to initialize a translation from scratch or to update an already existing translation.
Since a PO file with translations does not exist the translator can merely use /dev/null to fake the “old” translation file.
msgmerge --compendium compendium.po -o file.po /dev/null file.pot
Concatenate the compendium file(s) and the existing PO, merge the result with the POT file and remove the obsolete entries (optional, here done using ‘msgattrib’):
msgcat --use-first -o update.po compendium1.po compendium2.po file.po msgmerge update.po file.pot | msgattrib --no-obsolete > file.po
Next: Producing Binary MO Files, Previous: Editing PO Files, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
Sometimes it is necessary to manipulate PO files in a way that is better
performed automatically than by hand. GNU gettext includes a
complete set of tools for this purpose.
When merging two packages into a single package, the resulting POT file will be the concatenation of the two packages’ POT files. Thus the maintainer must concatenate the two existing package translations into a single translation catalog, for each language. This is best performed using ‘msgcat’. It is then the translators’ duty to deal with any possible conflicts that arose during the merge.
When a translator takes over the translation job from another translator, but she uses a different character encoding in her locale, she will convert the catalog to her character encoding. This is best done through the ‘msgconv’ program.
When a maintainer takes a source file with tagged messages from another package, he should also take the existing translations for this source file (and not let the translators do the same job twice). One way to do this is through ‘msggrep’, another is to create a POT file for that source file and use ‘msgmerge’.
When a translator wants to adjust some translation catalog for a special dialect or orthography — for example, German as written in Switzerland versus German as written in Germany — she needs to apply some text processing to every message in the catalog. The tool for doing this is ‘msgfilter’.
Another use of msgfilter is to produce approximately the POT file for
which a given PO file was made. This can be done through a filter command
like ‘msgfilter sed -e d | sed -e '/^# /d'’. Note that the original
POT file may have had different comments and different plural message counts,
that’s why it’s better to use the original POT file if available.
When a translator wants to check her translations, for example according to orthography rules or using a non-interactive spell checker, she can do so using the ‘msgexec’ program.
When third party tools create PO or POT files, sometimes duplicates cannot
be avoided. But the GNU gettext tools give an error when they
encounter duplicate msgids in the same file and in the same domain.
To merge duplicates, the ‘msguniq’ program can be used.
‘msgcomm’ is a more general tool for keeping or throwing away duplicates, occurring in different files.
‘msgcmp’ can be used to check whether a translation catalog is completely translated.
‘msgattrib’ can be used to select and extract only the fuzzy or untranslated messages of a translation catalog.
‘msgen’ is useful as a first step for preparing English translation catalogs. It copies each message’s msgid to its msgstr.
Finally, for those applications where all these various programs are not sufficient, a library ‘libgettextpo’ is provided that can be used to write other specialized programs that process PO files.
msgcat Programmsgconv Programmsggrep Programmsgfilter Programmsguniq Programmsgcomm Programmsgcmp Programmsgattrib Programmsgen Programmsgexec Program
Next: Invoking the msgconv Program, Up: Manipulating PO Files [Contents][Index]
msgcat Programmsgcat [option] [inputfile]...
The msgcat program concatenates and merges the specified PO files.
It finds messages which are common to two or more of the specified PO files.
By using the --more-than option, greater commonality may be requested
before messages are printed. Conversely, the --less-than option may be
used to specify less commonality before messages are printed (i.e.
‘--less-than=2’ will only print the unique messages). Translations,
comments, extracted comments, and file positions will be cumulated, except that
if --use-first is specified, they will be taken from the first PO file
to define them.
To concatenate POT files, better use xgettext, not msgcat,
because msgcat would choke on the undefined charsets in the specified
POT files.
Input files.
Read the names of the input files from file instead of getting them from the command line.
Add directory to the list of directories. Source files are searched relative to this list of directories. The resulting .po file will be written relative to the current directory, though.
If inputfile is ‘-’, standard input is read.
Write output to specified file.
The results are written to standard output if no output file is specified or if it is ‘-’.
Print messages with less than number definitions, defaults to infinite if not set.
Print messages with more than number definitions, defaults to 0 if not set.
Shorthand for ‘--less-than=2’. Requests that only unique messages be printed.
Specify encoding for output.
Use first available translation for each message. Don’t merge several translations into one.
Specify the ‘Language’ field to be used in the header entry. See Filling in the Header Entry for the meaning of this field. Note: The ‘Language-Team’ and ‘Plural-Forms’ fields are left unchanged.
Specify whether or when to use colors and other text attributes.
See The --color option for details.
Specify the CSS style rule file to use for --color.
See The --style option for details.
Always write an output file even if it contains no message.
Write the .po file using indented style.
Do not write ‘#: filename:line’ lines.
Generate ‘#: filename:line’ lines (default).
The optional type can be either ‘full’, ‘file’, or
‘never’. If it is not given or ‘full’, it generates the
lines with both file name and line number. If it is ‘file’, the
line number part is omitted. If it is ‘never’, it completely
suppresses the lines (same as --no-location).
Write out a strict Uniforum conforming PO file. Note that this Uniforum format should be avoided because it doesn’t support the GNU extensions.
Write out a Java ResourceBundle in Java .properties syntax. Note
that this file format doesn’t support plural forms and silently drops
obsolete messages.
Write out a NeXTstep/GNUstep localized resource file in .strings syntax.
Note that this file format doesn’t support plural forms.
Set the output page width. Long strings in the output files will be split across multiple lines in order to ensure that each line’s width (= number of screen columns) is less or equal to the given number.
Do not break long message lines. Message lines whose width exceeds the output page width will not be split into several lines. Only file reference lines which are wider than the output page width will be split.
Generate sorted output. Note that using this option makes it much harder for the translator to understand each message’s context.
Sort output by file location.
Next: Invoking the msggrep Program, Previous: Invoking the msgcat Program, Up: Manipulating PO Files [Contents][Index]
msgconv Programmsgconv [option] [inputfile]
The msgconv program converts a translation catalog to a different
character encoding.
Input PO file.
Add directory to the list of directories. Source files are searched relative to this list of directories. The resulting .po file will be written relative to the current directory, though.
If no inputfile is given or if it is ‘-’, standard input is read.
Write output to specified file.
The results are written to standard output if no output file is specified or if it is ‘-’.
Specify encoding for output.
The default encoding is the current locale’s encoding.
Specify whether or when to use colors and other text attributes.
See The --color option for details.
Specify the CSS style rule file to use for --color.
See The --style option for details.
Always write an output file even if it contains no message.
Write the .po file using indented style.
Do not write ‘#: filename:line’ lines.
Generate ‘#: filename:line’ lines (default).
The optional type can be either ‘full’, ‘file’, or
‘never’. If it is not given or ‘full’, it generates the
lines with both file name and line number. If it is ‘file’, the
line number part is omitted. If it is ‘never’, it completely
suppresses the lines (same as --no-location).
Write out a strict Uniforum conforming PO file. Note that this Uniforum format should be avoided because it doesn’t support the GNU extensions.
Write out a Java ResourceBundle in Java .properties syntax. Note
that this file format doesn’t support plural forms and silently drops
obsolete messages.
Write out a NeXTstep/GNUstep localized resource file in .strings syntax.
Note that this file format doesn’t support plural forms.
Set the output page width. Long strings in the output files will be split across multiple lines in order to ensure that each line’s width (= number of screen columns) is less or equal to the given number.
Do not break long message lines. Message lines whose width exceeds the output page width will not be split into several lines. Only file reference lines which are wider than the output page width will be split.
Generate sorted output. Note that using this option makes it much harder for the translator to understand each message’s context.
Sort output by file location.
Next: Invoking the msgfilter Program, Previous: Invoking the msgconv Program, Up: Manipulating PO Files [Contents][Index]
msggrep Programmsggrep [option] [inputfile]
The msggrep program extracts all messages of a translation catalog
that match a given pattern or belong to some given source files.
Input PO file.
Add directory to the list of directories. Source files are searched relative to this list of directories. The resulting .po file will be written relative to the current directory, though.
If no inputfile is given or if it is ‘-’, standard input is read.
Write output to specified file.
The results are written to standard output if no output file is specified or if it is ‘-’.
[-N sourcefile]... [-M domainname]... [-J msgctxt-pattern] [-K msgid-pattern] [-T msgstr-pattern] [-C comment-pattern]
A message is selected if
When more than one selection criterion is specified, the set of selected messages is the union of the selected messages of each criterion.
msgctxt-pattern or msgid-pattern or msgstr-pattern syntax:
[-E | -F] [-e pattern | -f file]...
patterns are basic regular expressions by default, or extended regular expressions if -E is given, or fixed strings if -F is given.
Select messages extracted from sourcefile. sourcefile can be either a literal file name or a wildcard pattern.
Select messages belonging to domain domainname.
Start of patterns for the msgctxt.
Start of patterns for the msgid.
Start of patterns for the msgstr.
Start of patterns for the translator’s comment.
Start of patterns for the extracted comments.
Specify that pattern is an extended regular expression.
Specify that pattern is a set of newline-separated strings.
Use pattern as a regular expression.
Obtain pattern from file.
Ignore case distinctions.
Output only the messages that do not match any selection criterion, instead of the messages that match a selection criterion.
Specify whether or when to use colors and other text attributes.
See The --color option for details.
Specify the CSS style rule file to use for --color.
See The --style option for details.
Always write an output file even if it contains no message.
Write the .po file using indented style.
Do not write ‘#: filename:line’ lines.
Generate ‘#: filename:line’ lines (default).
The optional type can be either ‘full’, ‘file’, or
‘never’. If it is not given or ‘full’, it generates the
lines with both file name and line number. If it is ‘file’, the
line number part is omitted. If it is ‘never’, it completely
suppresses the lines (same as --no-location).
Write out a strict Uniforum conforming PO file. Note that this Uniforum format should be avoided because it doesn’t support the GNU extensions.
Write out a Java ResourceBundle in Java .properties syntax. Note
that this file format doesn’t support plural forms and silently drops
obsolete messages.
Write out a NeXTstep/GNUstep localized resource file in .strings syntax.
Note that this file format doesn’t support plural forms.
Set the output page width. Long strings in the output files will be split across multiple lines in order to ensure that each line’s width (= number of screen columns) is less or equal to the given number.
Do not break long message lines. Message lines whose width exceeds the output page width will not be split into several lines. Only file reference lines which are wider than the output page width will be split.
Generate sorted output. Note that using this option makes it much harder for the translator to understand each message’s context.
Sort output by file location.
To extract the messages that come from the source files
gnulib-lib/error.c and gnulib-lib/getopt.c:
msggrep -N gnulib-lib/error.c -N gnulib-lib/getopt.c input.po
To extract the messages that contain the string “Please specify” in the original string:
msggrep --msgid -F -e 'Please specify' input.po
To extract the messages that have a context specifier of either “Menu>File” or “Menu>Edit” or a submenu of them:
msggrep --msgctxt -E -e '^Menu>(File|Edit)' input.po
To extract the messages whose translation contains one of the strings in the
file wordlist.txt:
msggrep --msgstr -F -f wordlist.txt input.po
Next: Invoking the msguniq Program, Previous: Invoking the msggrep Program, Up: Manipulating PO Files [Contents][Index]
msgfilter Programmsgfilter [option] filter [filter-option]
The msgfilter program applies a filter to all translations of a
translation catalog.
During each filter invocation, the environment variable
MSGFILTER_MSGID is bound to the message’s msgid, and the environment
variable MSGFILTER_LOCATION is bound to the location in the PO file
of the message. If the message has a context, the environment variable
MSGFILTER_MSGCTXT is bound to the message’s msgctxt, otherwise it is
unbound. If the message has a plural form, environment variable
MSGFILTER_MSGID_PLURAL is bound to the message’s msgid_plural and
MSGFILTER_PLURAL_FORM is bound to the order number of the plural
actually processed (starting with 0), otherwise both are unbound.
If the message has a previous msgid (added by msgmerge),
environment variable MSGFILTER_PREV_MSGCTXT is bound to the
message’s previous msgctxt, MSGFILTER_PREV_MSGID is bound to
the previous msgid, and MSGFILTER_PREV_MSGID_PLURAL is bound to
the previous msgid_plural.
Input PO file.
Add directory to the list of directories. Source files are searched relative to this list of directories. The resulting .po file will be written relative to the current directory, though.
If no inputfile is given or if it is ‘-’, standard input is read.
Write output to specified file.
The results are written to standard output if no output file is specified or if it is ‘-’.
The filter can be any program that reads a translation from standard input and writes a modified translation to standard output. A frequently used filter is ‘sed’. A few particular built-in filters are also recognized.
Add newline at the end of each input line and also strip the ending newline from the output line.
Note: If the filter is not a built-in filter, you have to care about encodings:
It is your responsibility to ensure that the filter can cope
with input encoded in the translation catalog’s encoding. If the
filter wants input in a particular encoding, you can in a first step
convert the translation catalog to that encoding using the ‘msgconv’
program, before invoking ‘msgfilter’. If the filter wants input
in the locale’s encoding, but you want to avoid the locale’s encoding, then
you can first convert the translation catalog to UTF-8 using the
‘msgconv’ program and then make ‘msgfilter’ work in an UTF-8
locale, by using the LC_ALL environment variable.
Note: Most translations in a translation catalog don’t end with a
newline character. For this reason, unless the --newline
option is used, it is important that the filter recognizes its
last input line even if it ends without a newline, and that it doesn’t
add an undesired trailing newline at the end. The ‘sed’ program on
some platforms is known to ignore the last line of input if it is not
terminated with a newline. You can use GNU sed instead; it does
not have this limitation.
The filter ‘recode-sr-latin’ is recognized as a built-in filter. The command ‘recode-sr-latin’ converts Serbian text, written in the Cyrillic script, to the Latin script. The command ‘msgfilter recode-sr-latin’ applies this conversion to the translations of a PO file. Thus, it can be used to convert an sr.po file to an sr@latin.po file.
The filter ‘quot’ is recognized as a built-in filter. The command ‘msgfilter quot’ converts any quotations surrounded by a pair of ‘"’, ‘'’, and ‘`’.
The filter ‘boldquot’ is recognized as a built-in filter. The command ‘msgfilter boldquot’ converts any quotations surrounded by a pair of ‘"’, ‘'’, and ‘`’, also adding the VT100 escape sequences to the text to decorate it as bold.
The use of built-in filters is not sensitive to the current locale’s encoding. Moreover, when used with a built-in filter, ‘msgfilter’ can automatically convert the message catalog to the UTF-8 encoding when needed.
Specify whether or when to use colors and other text attributes.
See The --color option for details.
Specify the CSS style rule file to use for --color.
See The --style option for details.
Always write an output file even if it contains no message.
Write the .po file using indented style.
Keep the header entry, i.e. the message with ‘msgid ""’, unmodified, instead of filtering it. By default, the header entry is subject to filtering like any other message.
Do not write ‘#: filename:line’ lines.
Generate ‘#: filename:line’ lines (default).
The optional type can be either ‘full’, ‘file’, or
‘never’. If it is not given or ‘full’, it generates the
lines with both file name and line number. If it is ‘file’, the
line number part is omitted. If it is ‘never’, it completely
suppresses the lines (same as --no-location).
Write out a strict Uniforum conforming PO file. Note that this Uniforum format should be avoided because it doesn’t support the GNU extensions.
Write out a Java ResourceBundle in Java .properties syntax. Note
that this file format doesn’t support plural forms and silently drops
obsolete messages.
Write out a NeXTstep/GNUstep localized resource file in .strings syntax.
Note that this file format doesn’t support plural forms.
Set the output page width. Long strings in the output files will be split across multiple lines in order to ensure that each line’s width (= number of screen columns) is less or equal to the given number.
Do not break long message lines. Message lines whose width exceeds the output page width will not be split into several lines. Only file reference lines which are wider than the output page width will be split.
Generate sorted output. Note that using this option makes it much harder for the translator to understand each message’s context.
Sort output by file location.
To convert German translations to Swiss orthography (in an UTF-8 locale):
msgconv -t UTF-8 de.po | msgfilter sed -e 's/ß/ss/g'
To convert Serbian translations in Cyrillic script to Latin script:
msgfilter recode-sr-latin < sr.po
Next: Invoking the msgcomm Program, Previous: Invoking the msgfilter Program, Up: Manipulating PO Files [Contents][Index]
msguniq Programmsguniq [option] [inputfile]
The msguniq program unifies duplicate translations in a translation
catalog. It finds duplicate translations of the same message ID. Such
duplicates are invalid input for other programs like msgfmt,
msgmerge or msgcat. By default, duplicates are merged
together. When using the ‘--repeated’ option, only duplicates are
output, and all other messages are discarded. Comments and extracted
comments will be cumulated, except that if ‘--use-first’ is
specified, they will be taken from the first translation. File positions
will be cumulated. When using the ‘--unique’ option, duplicates are
discarded.
Input PO file.
Add directory to the list of directories. Source files are searched relative to this list of directories. The resulting .po file will be written relative to the current directory, though.
If no inputfile is given or if it is ‘-’, standard input is read.
Write output to specified file.
The results are written to standard output if no output file is specified or if it is ‘-’.
Specify encoding for output.
Use first available translation for each message. Don’t merge several translations into one.
Specify whether or when to use colors and other text attributes.
See The --color option for details.
Specify the CSS style rule file to use for --color.
See The --style option for details.
Always write an output file even if it contains no message.
Write the .po file using indented style.
Do not write ‘#: filename:line’ lines.
Generate ‘#: filename:line’ lines (default).
The optional type can be either ‘full’, ‘file’, or
‘never’. If it is not given or ‘full’, it generates the
lines with both file name and line number. If it is ‘file’, the
line number part is omitted. If it is ‘never’, it completely
suppresses the lines (same as --no-location).
Write out a strict Uniforum conforming PO file. Note that this Uniforum format should be avoided because it doesn’t support the GNU extensions.
Write out a Java ResourceBundle in Java .properties syntax. Note
that this file format doesn’t support plural forms and silently drops
obsolete messages.
Write out a NeXTstep/GNUstep localized resource file in .strings syntax.
Note that this file format doesn’t support plural forms.
Set the output page width. Long strings in the output files will be split across multiple lines in order to ensure that each line’s width (= number of screen columns) is less or equal to the given number.
Do not break long message lines. Message lines whose width exceeds the output page width will not be split into several lines. Only file reference lines which are wider than the output page width will be split.
Generate sorted output. Note that using this option makes it much harder for the translator to understand each message’s context.
Sort output by file location.
Next: Invoking the msgcmp Program, Previous: Invoking the msguniq Program, Up: Manipulating PO Files [Contents][Index]
msgcomm Programmsgcomm [option] [inputfile]...
The msgcomm program finds messages which are common to two or more
of the specified PO files.
By using the --more-than option, greater commonality may be requested
before messages are printed. Conversely, the --less-than option may be
used to specify less commonality before messages are printed (i.e.
‘--less-than=2’ will only print the unique messages). Translations,
comments and extracted comments will be preserved, but only from the first
PO file to define them. File positions from all PO files will be
cumulated.
Input files.
Read the names of the input files from file instead of getting them from the command line.
Add directory to the list of directories. Source files are searched relative to this list of directories. The resulting .po file will be written relative to the current directory, though.
If inputfile is ‘-’, standard input is read.
Write output to specified file.
The results are written to standard output if no output file is specified or if it is ‘-’.
Print messages with less than number definitions, defaults to infinite if not set.
Print messages with more than number definitions, defaults to 1 if not set.
Shorthand for ‘--less-than=2’. Requests that only unique messages be printed.
Specify whether or when to use colors and other text attributes.
See The --color option for details.
Specify the CSS style rule file to use for --color.
See The --style option for details.
Always write an output file even if it contains no message.
Write the .po file using indented style.
Do not write ‘#: filename:line’ lines.
Generate ‘#: filename:line’ lines (default).
The optional type can be either ‘full’, ‘file’, or
‘never’. If it is not given or ‘full’, it generates the
lines with both file name and line number. If it is ‘file’, the
line number part is omitted. If it is ‘never’, it completely
suppresses the lines (same as --no-location).
Write out a strict Uniforum conforming PO file. Note that this Uniforum format should be avoided because it doesn’t support the GNU extensions.
Write out a Java ResourceBundle in Java .properties syntax. Note
that this file format doesn’t support plural forms and silently drops
obsolete messages.
Write out a NeXTstep/GNUstep localized resource file in .strings syntax.
Note that this file format doesn’t support plural forms.
Set the output page width. Long strings in the output files will be split across multiple lines in order to ensure that each line’s width (= number of screen columns) is less or equal to the given number.
Do not break long message lines. Message lines whose width exceeds the output page width will not be split into several lines. Only file reference lines which are wider than the output page width will be split.
Generate sorted output. Note that using this option makes it much harder for the translator to understand each message’s context.
Sort output by file location.
Don’t write header with ‘msgid ""’ entry.
Next: Invoking the msgattrib Program, Previous: Invoking the msgcomm Program, Up: Manipulating PO Files [Contents][Index]
msgcmp Programmsgcmp [option] def.po ref.pot
The msgcmp program compares two Uniforum style .po files to check that
both contain the same set of msgid strings. The def.po file is an
existing PO file with the translations. The ref.pot file is the last
created PO file, or a PO Template file (generally created by xgettext).
This is useful for checking that you have translated each and every message
in your program. Where an exact match cannot be found, fuzzy matching is
used to produce better diagnostics.
Translations.
References to the sources.
Add directory to the list of directories. Source files are searched relative to this list of directories.
Apply ref.pot to each of the domains in def.po.
Do not use fuzzy matching when an exact match is not found. This may speed up the operation considerably.
Consider fuzzy messages in the def.po file like translated messages. Note that using this option is usually wrong, because fuzzy messages are exactly those which have not been validated by a human translator.
Consider untranslated messages in the def.po file like translated messages. Note that using this option is usually wrong.
Next: Invoking the msgen Program, Previous: Invoking the msgcmp Program, Up: Manipulating PO Files [Contents][Index]
msgattrib Programmsgattrib [option] [inputfile]
The msgattrib program filters the messages of a translation catalog
according to their attributes, and manipulates the attributes.
Input PO file.
Add directory to the list of directories. Source files are searched relative to this list of directories. The resulting .po file will be written relative to the current directory, though.
If no inputfile is given or if it is ‘-’, standard input is read.
Write output to specified file.
The results are written to standard output if no output file is specified or if it is ‘-’.
Keep translated messages, remove untranslated messages.
Keep untranslated messages, remove translated messages.
Remove ‘fuzzy’ marked messages.
Keep ‘fuzzy’ marked messages, remove all other messages.
Remove obsolete #~ messages.
Keep obsolete #~ messages, remove all other messages.
Attributes are modified after the message selection/removal has been performed. If the ‘--only-file’ or ‘--ignore-file’ option is specified, the attribute modification is applied only to those messages that are listed in the only-file and not listed in the ignore-file.
Set all messages ‘fuzzy’.
Set all messages non-‘fuzzy’.
Set all messages obsolete.
Set all messages non-obsolete.
When setting ‘fuzzy’ mark, keep “previous msgid” of translated messages.
Remove the “previous msgid” (‘#|’) comments from all messages.
When removing ‘fuzzy’ mark, also set msgstr empty.
Limit the attribute changes to entries that are listed in file. file should be a PO or POT file.
Limit the attribute changes to entries that are not listed in file. file should be a PO or POT file.
Synonym for ‘--only-fuzzy --clear-fuzzy’: It keeps only the fuzzy messages and removes their ‘fuzzy’ mark.
Synonym for ‘--only-obsolete --clear-obsolete’: It keeps only the obsolete messages and makes them non-obsolete.
Specify whether or when to use colors and other text attributes.
See The --color option for details.
Specify the CSS style rule file to use for --color.
See The --style option for details.
Always write an output file even if it contains no message.
Write the .po file using indented style.
Do not write ‘#: filename:line’ lines.
Generate ‘#: filename:line’ lines (default).
The optional type can be either ‘full’, ‘file’, or
‘never’. If it is not given or ‘full’, it generates the
lines with both file name and line number. If it is ‘file’, the
line number part is omitted. If it is ‘never’, it completely
suppresses the lines (same as --no-location).
Write out a strict Uniforum conforming PO file. Note that this Uniforum format should be avoided because it doesn’t support the GNU extensions.
Write out a Java ResourceBundle in Java .properties syntax. Note
that this file format doesn’t support plural forms and silently drops
obsolete messages.
Write out a NeXTstep/GNUstep localized resource file in .strings syntax.
Note that this file format doesn’t support plural forms.
Set the output page width. Long strings in the output files will be split across multiple lines in order to ensure that each line’s width (= number of screen columns) is less or equal to the given number.
Do not break long message lines. Message lines whose width exceeds the output page width will not be split into several lines. Only file reference lines which are wider than the output page width will be split.
Generate sorted output. Note that using this option makes it much harder for the translator to understand each message’s context.
Sort output by file location.
Next: Invoking the msgexec Program, Previous: Invoking the msgattrib Program, Up: Manipulating PO Files [Contents][Index]
msgen Programmsgen [option] inputfile
The msgen program creates an English translation catalog. The
input file is the last created English PO file, or a PO Template file
(generally created by xgettext). Untranslated entries are assigned a
translation that is identical to the msgid.
Note: ‘msginit --no-translator --locale=en’ performs a very similar
task. The main difference is that msginit cares specially about
the header entry, whereas msgen doesn’t.
Input PO or POT file.
Add directory to the list of directories. Source files are searched relative to this list of directories. The resulting .po file will be written relative to the current directory, though.
If inputfile is ‘-’, standard input is read.
Write output to specified file.
The results are written to standard output if no output file is specified or if it is ‘-’.
Specify the ‘Language’ field to be used in the header entry. See Filling in the Header Entry for the meaning of this field. Note: The ‘Language-Team’ and ‘Plural-Forms’ fields are not set by this option.
Specify whether or when to use colors and other text attributes.
See The --color option for details.
Specify the CSS style rule file to use for --color.
See The --style option for details.
Always write an output file even if it contains no message.
Write the .po file using indented style.
Do not write ‘#: filename:line’ lines.
Generate ‘#: filename:line’ lines (default).
The optional type can be either ‘full’, ‘file’, or
‘never’. If it is not given or ‘full’, it generates the
lines with both file name and line number. If it is ‘file’, the
line number part is omitted. If it is ‘never’, it completely
suppresses the lines (same as --no-location).
Write out a strict Uniforum conforming PO file. Note that this Uniforum format should be avoided because it doesn’t support the GNU extensions.
Write out a Java ResourceBundle in Java .properties syntax. Note
that this file format doesn’t support plural forms and silently drops
obsolete messages.
Write out a NeXTstep/GNUstep localized resource file in .strings syntax.
Note that this file format doesn’t support plural forms.
Set the output page width. Long strings in the output files will be split across multiple lines in order to ensure that each line’s width (= number of screen columns) is less or equal to the given number.
Do not break long message lines. Message lines whose width exceeds the output page width will not be split into several lines. Only file reference lines which are wider than the output page width will be split.
Generate sorted output. Note that using this option makes it much harder for the translator to understand each message’s context.
Sort output by file location.
Next: Highlighting parts of PO files, Previous: Invoking the msgen Program, Up: Manipulating PO Files [Contents][Index]
msgexec Programmsgexec [option] command [command-option]
The msgexec program applies a command to all translations of a
translation catalog.
The command can be any program that reads a translation from standard
input. It is invoked once for each translation. Its output becomes
msgexec’s output. msgexec’s return code is the maximum return code
across all invocations.
A special builtin command called ‘0’ outputs the translation, followed by a null byte. The output of ‘msgexec 0’ is suitable as input for ‘xargs -0’.
Add newline at the end of each input line.
During each command invocation, the environment variable
MSGEXEC_MSGID is bound to the message’s msgid, and the environment
variable MSGEXEC_LOCATION is bound to the location in the PO file
of the message. If the message has a context, the environment variable
MSGEXEC_MSGCTXT is bound to the message’s msgctxt, otherwise it is
unbound. If the message has a plural form, environment variable
MSGEXEC_MSGID_PLURAL is bound to the message’s msgid_plural and
MSGEXEC_PLURAL_FORM is bound to the order number of the plural
actually processed (starting with 0), otherwise both are unbound.
If the message has a previous msgid (added by msgmerge),
environment variable MSGEXEC_PREV_MSGCTXT is bound to the
message’s previous msgctxt, MSGEXEC_PREV_MSGID is bound to
the previous msgid, and MSGEXEC_PREV_MSGID_PLURAL is bound to
the previous msgid_plural.
Note: It is your responsibility to ensure that the command can cope
with input encoded in the translation catalog’s encoding. If the
command wants input in a particular encoding, you can in a first step
convert the translation catalog to that encoding using the ‘msgconv’
program, before invoking ‘msgexec’. If the command wants input
in the locale’s encoding, but you want to avoid the locale’s encoding, then
you can first convert the translation catalog to UTF-8 using the
‘msgconv’ program and then make ‘msgexec’ work in an UTF-8
locale, by using the LC_ALL environment variable.
Input PO file.
Add directory to the list of directories. Source files are searched relative to this list of directories. The resulting .po file will be written relative to the current directory, though.
If no inputfile is given or if it is ‘-’, standard input is read.
Next: Other tools for manipulating PO files, Previous: Invoking the msgexec Program, Up: Manipulating PO Files [Contents][Index]
Translators are usually only interested in seeing the untranslated and fuzzy messages of a PO file. Also, when a message is set fuzzy because the msgid changed, they want to see the differences between the previous msgid and the current one (especially if the msgid is long and only few words in it have changed). Finally, it’s always welcome to highlight the different sections of a message in a PO file (comments, msgid, msgstr, etc.).
Such highlighting is possible through the options ‘--color’ and
‘--style’. They are supported by all the programs that produce
a PO file on standard output, such as msgcat, msgmerge,
and msgunfmt.
--color optionTERM--style optionless for viewing PO files--color optionThe ‘--color=when’ option specifies under which conditions colorized output should be generated. The when part can be one of the following:
alwaysyesThe output will be colorized.
nevernoThe output will not be colorized.
autottyThe output will be colorized if the output device is a tty, i.e. when the output goes directly to a text screen or terminal emulator window.
htmlThe output will be colorized and be in HTML format.
testThis is a special value, understood only by the msgcat program. It
is explained in the next section (The environment variable TERM).
‘--color’ is equivalent to ‘--color=yes’. The default is ‘--color=auto’.
Thus, a command like ‘msgcat vi.po’ will produce colorized output when called by itself in a command window. Whereas in a pipe, such as ‘msgcat vi.po | less -R’, it will not produce colorized output. To get colorized output in this situation nevertheless, use the command ‘msgcat --color vi.po | less -R’.
The ‘--color=html’ option will produce output that can be viewed in a browser. This can be useful, for example, for Indic languages, because the renderic of Indic scripts in browsers is usually better than in terminal emulators.
Note that the output produced with the --color option is not
a valid PO file in itself. It contains additional terminal-specific escape
sequences or HTML tags. A PO file reader will give a syntax error when
confronted with such content. Except for the ‘--color=html’ case,
you therefore normally don’t need to save output produced with the
--color option in a file.
Next: The --style option, Previous: The --color option, Up: Highlighting parts of PO files [Contents][Index]
TERMThe environment variable TERM contains a identifier for the text
window’s capabilities. You can get a detailed list of these cababilities
by using the ‘infocmp’ command, using ‘man 5 terminfo’ as a
reference.
When producing text with embedded color directives, msgcat looks
at the TERM variable. Text windows today typically support at least
8 colors. Often, however, the text window supports 16 or more colors,
even though the TERM variable is set to a identifier denoting only
8 supported colors. It can be worth setting the TERM variable to
a different value in these cases:
xtermxterm is in most cases built with support for 16 colors. It can also
be built with support for 88 or 256 colors (but not both). You can try to
set TERM to either xterm-16color, xterm-88color, or
xterm-256color.
rxvtrxvt is often built with support for 16 colors. You can try to set
TERM to rxvt-16color.
konsolekonsole too is often built with support for 16 colors. You can try to
set TERM to konsole-16color or xterm-16color.
After setting TERM, you can verify it by invoking
‘msgcat --color=test’ and seeing whether the output looks like a
reasonable color map.
Next: Style rules for PO files, Previous: The environment variable TERM, Up: Highlighting parts of PO files [Contents][Index]
--style optionThe ‘--style=style_file’ option specifies the style file to use
when colorizing. It has an effect only when the --color option is
effective.
If the --style option is not specified, the environment variable
PO_STYLE is considered. It is meant to point to the user’s
preferred style for PO files.
The default style file is $prefix/share/gettext/styles/po-default.css,
where $prefix is the installation location.
A few style files are predefined:
This style imitates the look used by vim 7.
This style imitates the look used by GNU Emacs 21 and 22 in an X11 window.
This style imitates the look used by GNU Emacs 22 in a terminal of type ‘xterm’ (8 colors) or ‘xterm-16color’ (16 colors) or ‘xterm-256color’ (256 colors), respectively.
You can use these styles without specifying a directory. They are actually
located in $prefix/share/gettext/styles/, where $prefix is the
installation location.
You can also design your own styles. This is described in the next section.
Next: Customizing less for viewing PO files, Previous: The --style option, Up: Highlighting parts of PO files [Contents][Index]
The same style file can be used for styling of a PO file, for terminal output and for HTML output. It is written in CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) syntax. See https://www.w3.org/TR/css2/cover.html for a formal definition of CSS. Many HTML authoring tutorials also contain explanations of CSS.
In the case of HTML output, the style file is embedded in the HTML output.
In the case of text output, the style file is interpreted by the
msgcat program. This means, in particular, that when
@import is used with relative file names, the file names are
@import, in the case of
text output. (Actually, @imports are not yet supported in this case,
due to a limitation in libcroco.)
CSS rules are built up from selectors and declarations. The declarations specify graphical properties; the selectors specify when they apply.
In PO files, the following simple selectors (based on "CSS classes", see the CSS2 spec, section 5.8.3) are supported.
.headerThis matches the header entry of a PO file.
.translatedThis matches a translated message.
.untranslatedThis matches an untranslated message (i.e. a message with empty translation).
.fuzzyThis matches a fuzzy message (i.e. a message which has a translation that needs review by the translator).
.obsoleteThis matches an obsolete message (i.e. a message that was translated but is not needed by the current POT file any more).
white-space # translator-comments #. extracted-comments #: reference… #, flag… #| msgid previous-untranslated-string msgid untranslated-string msgstr translated-string
.commentThis matches all comments (translator comments, extracted comments, source file reference comments, flag comments, previous message comments, as well as the entire obsolete messages).
.translator-commentThis matches the translator comments.
.extracted-commentThis matches the extracted comments, i.e. the comments placed by the programmer at the attention of the translator.
.reference-commentThis matches the source file reference comments (entire lines).
.referenceThis matches the individual source file references inside the source file reference comment lines.
.flag-commentThis matches the flag comment lines (entire lines).
.flagThis matches the individual flags inside flag comment lines.
.fuzzy-flagThis matches the ‘fuzzy’ flag inside flag comment lines.
.previous-commentThis matches the comments containing the previous untranslated string (entire lines).
.previousThis matches the previous untranslated string including the string delimiters,
the associated keywords (msgid etc.) and the spaces between them.
.msgidThis matches the untranslated string including the string delimiters,
the associated keywords (msgid etc.) and the spaces between them.
.msgstrThis matches the translated string including the string delimiters,
the associated keywords (msgstr etc.) and the spaces between them.
.keywordThis matches the keywords (msgid, msgstr, etc.).
.stringThis matches strings, including the string delimiters (double quotes).
.textThis matches the entire contents of a string (excluding the string delimiters, i.e. the double quotes).
.escape-sequenceThis matches an escape sequence (starting with a backslash).
.format-directiveThis matches a format string directive (starting with a ‘%’ sign in the
case of most programming languages, with a ‘{’ in the case of
java-format and csharp-format, with a ‘~’ in the case of
lisp-format and scheme-format, or with ‘$’ in the case of
sh-format).
.invalid-format-directiveThis matches an invalid format string directive.
.addedIn an untranslated string, this matches a part of the string that was not present in the previous untranslated string. (Not yet implemented in this release.)
.changedIn an untranslated string or in a previous untranslated string, this matches a part of the string that is changed or replaced. (Not yet implemented in this release.)
.removedIn a previous untranslated string, this matches a part of the string that is not present in the current untranslated string. (Not yet implemented in this release.)
These selectors can be combined to hierarchical selectors. For example,
.msgstr .invalid-format-directive { color: red; }
will highlight the invalid format directives in the translated strings.
In text mode, pseudo-classes (CSS2 spec, section 5.11) and pseudo-elements (CSS2 spec, section 5.12) are not supported.
The declarations in HTML mode are not limited; any graphical attribute supported by the browsers can be used.
The declarations in text mode are limited to the following properties. Other properties will be silently ignored.
color (CSS2 spec, section 14.1)background-color (CSS2 spec, section 14.2.1)These properties is supported. Colors will be adjusted to match the terminal’s capabilities. Note that many terminals support only 8 colors.
font-weight (CSS2 spec, section 15.2.3)This property is supported, but most terminals can only render two different
weights: normal and bold. Values >= 600 are rendered as
bold.
font-style (CSS2 spec, section 15.2.3)This property is supported. The values italic and oblique are
rendered the same way.
text-decoration (CSS2 spec, section 16.3.1)This property is supported, limited to the values none and
underline.
Previous: Style rules for PO files, Up: Highlighting parts of PO files [Contents][Index]
less for viewing PO filesThe ‘less’ program is a popular text file browser for use in a text screen or terminal emulator. It also supports text with embedded escape sequences for colors and text decorations.
You can use less to view a PO file like this (assuming an UTF-8
environment):
msgcat --to-code=UTF-8 --color xyz.po | less -R
You can simplify this to this simple command:
less xyz.po
after these three preparations:
LESS environment
variable. In sh shells:
$ LESS="$LESS -R -f" $ export LESS
LESSOPEN and
LESSCLOSE environment variables, as indicated in the manual page
(‘man less’).
msgcat on them, producing
a temporary file. Like this:
case "$1" in
*.po)
tmpfile=`mktemp "${TMPDIR-/tmp}/less.XXXXXX"`
msgcat --to-code=UTF-8 --color "$1" > "$tmpfile"
echo "$tmpfile"
exit 0
;;
esac
Next: Writing your own programs that process PO files, Previous: Highlighting parts of PO files, Up: Manipulating PO Files [Contents][Index]
The “Pology” package is a Free Software package for manipulating PO files. It features, in particular:
Its home page is at http://pology.nedohodnik.net/.
Previous: Other tools for manipulating PO files, Up: Manipulating PO Files [Contents][Index]
For the tasks for which a combination of ‘msgattrib’, ‘msgcat’ etc. is not sufficient, a set of C functions is provided in a library, to make it possible to process PO files in your own programs. When you use this library, you don’t need to write routines to parse the PO file; instead, you retrieve a pointer in memory to each of messages contained in the PO file. Functions for writing those memory structures to a file after working with them are provided too.
The functions are declared in the header file ‘<gettext-po.h>’, and are defined in a library called ‘libgettextpo’.
The following example shows code how these functions can be used. Error handling code is omitted, as its implementation is delegated to the user provided functions.
struct po_xerror_handler handler =
{
.xerror = …,
.xerror2 = …
};
const char *filename = …;
/* Read the file into memory. */
po_file_t file = po_file_read (filename, &handler);
{
const char * const *domains = po_file_domains (file);
const char * const *domainp;
/* Iterate the domains contained in the file. */
for (domainp = domains; *domainp; domainp++)
{
po_message_t *message;
const char *domain = *domainp;
po_message_iterator_t iterator = po_message_iterator (file, domain);
/* Iterate each message inside the domain. */
while ((message = po_next_message (iterator)) != NULL)
{
/* Read data from the message … */
const char *msgid = po_message_msgid (message);
const char *msgstr = po_message_msgstr (message);
…
/* Modify its contents … */
if (perform_some_tests (msgid, msgstr))
po_message_set_fuzzy (message, 1);
…
}
/* Always release returned po_message_iterator_t. */
po_message_iterator_free (iterator);
}
/* Write back the result. */
po_file_t result = po_file_write (file, filename, &handler);
}
/* Always release the returned po_file_t. */
po_file_free (file);
Error management is performed through callbacks provided by the user of the library. They are provided through a parameter with the following type:
Its pointer is defined as po_xerror_handler_t. Contains
two fields, xerror and xerror2, with the following function
signatures.
This function is called to signal a problem of the given severity.
It must not return if severity is
PO_SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR.
message_text is the problem description. When multiline_p is true, it can contain multiple lines of text, each terminated with a newline, otherwise a single line.
message and/or filename and lineno indicate where the problem occurred:
NULL, filename and lineno and
column should be ignored.
(size_t)(-1), lineno and column
should be ignored.
(size_t)(-1), it should be ignored.
This function is called to signal a problem of the given severity
that refers to two messages. It must not return if
severity is PO_SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR.
It is similar to two calls to xerror. If possible, an ellipsis can be appended to message_text1 and prepended to message_text2.
Next: po_message_iterator_t API, Previous: Error Handling, Up: Writing your own programs that process PO files [Contents][Index]
This is a pointer type that refers to the contents of a PO file, after it has been read into memory.
The po_file_create function creates an empty PO file representation in
memory.
The po_file_read function reads a PO file into memory. The file name
is given as argument. The return value is a handle to the PO file’s contents,
valid until po_file_free is called on it. In case of error, the
functions from handler are called to signal it.
This function is exported as ‘po_file_read_v3’ at ABI level, but is
defined as po_file_read in C code after the inclusion of
‘<gettext-po.h>’.
The po_file_write function writes the contents of the memory
structure file the filename given. The return value is
file after a successful operation. In case of error, the
functions from handler are called to signal it.
This function is exported as ‘po_file_write_v2’ at ABI level, but
is defined as po_file_write in C code after the inclusion of
‘<gettext-po.h>’.
The po_file_free function frees a PO file’s contents from memory,
including all messages that are only implicitly accessible through iterators.
The po_file_domains function returns the domains for which the given
PO file has messages. The return value is a NULL terminated array
which is valid as long as the file handle is valid. For PO files which
contain no ‘domain’ directive, the return value contains only one domain,
namely the default domain "messages".
Next: po_message_t API, Previous: po_file_t API, Up: Writing your own programs that process PO files [Contents][Index]
This is a pointer type that refers to an iterator that produces a sequence of messages.
The po_message_iterator returns an iterator that will produce the
messages of file that belong to the given domain. If domain
is NULL, the default domain is used instead. To list the messages,
use the function po_next_message repeatedly.
The po_message_iterator_free function frees an iterator previously
allocated through the po_message_iterator function.
The po_next_message function returns the next message from
iterator and advances the iterator. It returns NULL when the
iterator has reached the end of its message list.
Next: PO Header Entry API, Previous: po_message_iterator_t API, Up: Writing your own programs that process PO files [Contents][Index]
This is a pointer type that refers to a message of a PO file, including its translation.
Returns a freshly constructed message. To finish initializing the
message, you must set the msgid and msgstr. It must be
inserted into a file to manage its memory, as there is no
po_message_free available to the user of the library.
The following functions access details of a po_message_t. Recall
that the results are valid as long as the file handle is valid.
The po_message_msgctxt function returns the msgctxt, the
context of message. Returns NULL for a message not restricted
to a context.
The po_message_set_msgctxt function changes the msgctxt,
the context of the message, to the value provided through
msgctxt. The value NULL removes the restriction.
The po_message_msgid function returns the msgid (untranslated
English string) of message. This is guaranteed to be non-NULL.
The po_message_set_msgid function changes the msgid
(untranslated English string) of message to the value provided through
msgid, a non-NULL string.
The po_message_msgid_plural function returns the msgid_plural
(untranslated English plural string) of message, a message with plurals,
or NULL for a message without plural.
The po_message_set_msgid_plural function changes the
msgid_plural (untranslated English plural string) of a message to
the value provided through msgid_plural, or removes the plurals if
NULL is provided as msgid_plural.
The po_message_msgstr function returns the msgstr (translation)
of message. For an untranslated message, the return value is an empty
string.
The po_message_set_msgstr function changes the msgstr
(translation) of message to the value provided through msgstr, a
non-NULL string.
The po_message_msgstr_plural function returns the
msgstr[index] of message, a message with plurals, or
NULL when the index is out of range or for a message without
plural.
The po_message_set_msgstr_plural function changes the
msgstr[index] of message, a message with plurals, to
the value provided through msgstr_plural. message must be a
message with plurals.
Use NULL as the value of msgstr_plural with
index pointing to the last element to reduce the number of plural
forms.
The po_message_comments function returns the comments of message,
a multiline string, ending in a newline, or a non-NULL empty string.
The po_message_set_comments function changes the comments of
message to the value comments, a multiline string, ending in a
newline, or a non-NULL empty string.
The po_message_extracted_comments function returns the extracted
comments of message, a multiline string, ending in a newline, or a
non-NULL empty string.
The po_message_set_extracted_comments function changes the
comments of message to the value extracted_comments, a multiline
string, ending in a newline, or a non-NULL empty string.
The po_message_prev_msgctxt function returns the previous
msgctxt, the previous context of message. Return
NULL for a message that does not have a previous context.
The po_message_set_prev_msgctxt function changes the previous
msgctxt, the context of the message, to the value provided
through prev_msgctxt. The value NULL removes the stored
previous msgctxt.
The po_message_prev_msgid function returns the previous
msgid (untranslated English string) of message, or
NULL if there is no previous msgid stored.
The po_message_set_prev_msgid function changes the previous
msgid (untranslated English string) of message to the value
provided through prev_msgid, or removes the message when it is
NULL.
The po_message_prev_msgid_plural function returns the previous
msgid_plural (untranslated English plural string) of
message, a message with plurals, or NULL for a message
without plural without any stored previous msgid_plural.
The po_message_set_prev_msgid_plural function changes the
previous msgid_plural (untranslated English plural string) of a
message to the value provided through prev_msgid_plural, or
removes the stored previous msgid_plural if NULL is
provided as prev_msgid_plural.
The po_message_is_obsolete function returns true when message
is marked as obsolete.
The po_message_set_obsolete function changes the obsolete mark of
message.
The po_message_is_fuzzy function returns true when message
is marked as fuzzy.
The po_message_set_fuzzy function changes the fuzzy mark of
message.
The po_message_is_format function returns true when the message
is marked as being a format string of format_type.
The po_message_set_fuzzy function changes the format mark of
the message for the format_type provided.
The po_message_is_range function returns true when the message
has a numeric range set, and stores the minimum and maximum value in the
locations pointed by minp and maxp respectively.
The po_message_set_range function changes the numeric range of
the message. min and max must be non-negative, with
min < max. Use min and max with value -1
to remove the numeric range of message.
Next: po_filepos_t API, Previous: po_message_t API, Up: Writing your own programs that process PO files [Contents][Index]
The following functions provide an interface to extract and manipulate
the header entry (see Filling in the Header Entry) from a file loaded in memory.
The meta information must be written back into the domain message with
the empty string as msgid.
Returns the header entry of a domain from file, a PO file loaded in
memory. The value NULL provided as domain denotes the
default domain. Returns NULL if there is no header entry.
Returns the value of field in the header entry. The return
value is either a freshly allocated string, to be freed by the caller,
or NULL.
Returns a freshly allocated string which contains the entry from header with field set to value. The field is added if necessary.
Next: Format Type API, Previous: PO Header Entry API, Up: Writing your own programs that process PO files [Contents][Index]
This is a pointer type that refers to a string’s position within a source file.
The following functions provide an interface to extract and manipulate these references.
Returns the file reference in position index from the message. If
index is out of range, returns NULL.
Removes the file reference in position index from the message. It moves all references following index one position backwards.
Adds a reference to the string from file starting at
start_line, if it is not already present for the message. The
value (size_t)(-1) for start_line denotes that the line
number is not available.
Next: Checking API, Previous: po_filepos_t API, Up: Writing your own programs that process PO files [Contents][Index]
Returns a NULL terminated array of the supported format types.
Returns the pretty name associated with format_type. For example,
it returns “C#” when format_type is “csharp_format”.
Return NULL if format_type is not a supported format type.
Previous: Format Type API, Up: Writing your own programs that process PO files [Contents][Index]
Tests whether the entire file is valid, like msgfmt does it. If it
is invalid, passes the reasons to handler.
Tests message, to be inserted at iterator in a PO file in memory,
like msgfmt does it. If it is invalid, passes the reasons to
handler. iterator is not modified by this call; it only
specifies the file and the domain.
Tests whether the message translation from message is a valid format string if the message is marked as being a format string. If it is invalid, passes the reasons to handler.
This function is exported as ‘po_message_check_format_v2’ at ABI
level, but is defined as po_message_check_format in C code after
the inclusion of ‘<gettext-po.h>’.
Next: The Programmer’s View, Previous: Manipulating PO Files, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
Next: Invoking the msgunfmt Program, Up: Producing Binary MO Files [Contents][Index]
msgfmt Programmsgfmt [option] filename.po …
The msgfmt programs generates a binary message catalog from a textual
translation description.
Add directory to the list of directories. Source files are searched relative to this list of directories. The resulting binary file will be written relative to the current directory, though.
If an input file is ‘-’, standard input is read.
Java mode: generate a Java ResourceBundle class.
Like –java, and assume Java2 (JDK 1.2 or higher).
C# mode: generate a .NET .dll file containing a subclass of
GettextResourceSet.
C# resources mode: generate a .NET .resources file.
Tcl mode: generate a tcl/msgcat .msg file.
Qt mode: generate a Qt .qm file.
Desktop Entry mode: generate a .desktop file.
XML mode: generate an XML file.
Write output to specified file.
Direct the program to work strictly following the Uniforum/Sun implementation. Currently this only affects the naming of the output file. If this option is not given the name of the output file is the same as the domain name. If the strict Uniforum mode is enabled the suffix .mo is added to the file name if it is not already present.
We find this behaviour of Sun’s implementation rather silly and so by default this mode is not selected.
If the output file is ‘-’, output is written to standard output.
Specify the resource name.
Specify the locale name, either a language specification of the form ll or a combined language and country specification of the form ll_CC.
Specify the base directory of classes directory hierarchy.
Produce a .java source file, instead of a compiled .class file.
The class name is determined by appending the locale name to the resource name, separated with an underscore. The ‘-d’ option is mandatory. The class is written under the specified directory.
Specify the resource name.
Specify the locale name, either a language specification of the form ll or a combined language and country specification of the form ll_CC.
Specify the base directory for locale dependent .dll files.
The ‘-l’ and ‘-d’ options are mandatory. The .dll file is written in a subdirectory of the specified directory whose name depends on the locale.
Specify the locale name, either a language specification of the form ll or a combined language and country specification of the form ll_CC.
Specify the base directory of .msg message catalogs.
The ‘-l’ and ‘-d’ options are mandatory. The .msg file is written in the specified directory.
Specify a .desktop file used as a template.
Specify keywordspec as an additional keyword to be looked for. Without a keywordspec, the option means to not use default keywords.
Specify the locale name, either a language specification of the form ll or a combined language and country specification of the form ll_CC.
Specify the directory where PO files are read. The directory must contain the ‘LINGUAS’ file.
To generate a ‘.desktop’ file for a single locale, you can use it as follows.
msgfmt --desktop --template=template --locale=locale \ -o file filename.po …
msgfmt provides a special "bulk" operation mode to process multiple .po files at a time.
msgfmt --desktop --template=template -d directory -o file
msgfmt first reads the ‘LINGUAS’ file under directory, and then processes all ‘.po’ files listed there. You can also limit the locales to a subset, through the ‘LINGUAS’ environment variable.
For either operation modes, the ‘-o’ and ‘--template’ options are mandatory.
Specify an XML file used as a template.
Specifies the language of the input files.
Specify the locale name, either a language specification of the form ll or a combined language and country specification of the form ll_CC.
Specify the base directory of .po message catalogs.
To generate an XML file for a single locale, you can use it as follows.
msgfmt --xml --template=template --locale=locale \ -o file filename.po …
msgfmt provides a special "bulk" operation mode to process multiple .po files at a time.
msgfmt --xml --template=template -d directory -o file
msgfmt first reads the ‘LINGUAS’ file under directory, and then processes all ‘.po’ files listed there. You can also limit the locales to a subset, through the ‘LINGUAS’ environment variable.
For either operation modes, the ‘-o’ and ‘--template’ options are mandatory.
Perform all the checks implied by --check-format, --check-header,
--check-domain.
Check language dependent format strings.
If the string represents a format string used in a
printf-like function both strings should have the same number of
‘%’ format specifiers, with matching types. If the flag
c-format or possible-c-format appears in the special
comment #, for this entry a check is performed. For example, the
check will diagnose using ‘%.*s’ against ‘%s’, or ‘%d’
against ‘%s’, or ‘%d’ against ‘%x’. It can even handle
positional parameters.
Normally the xgettext program automatically decides whether a
string is a format string or not. This algorithm is not perfect,
though. It might regard a string as a format string though it is not
used in a printf-like function and so msgfmt might report
errors where there are none.
To solve this problem the programmer can dictate the decision to the
xgettext program (see C Format Strings). The translator should not
consider removing the flag from the #, line. This "fix" would be
reversed again as soon as msgmerge is called the next time.
Verify presence and contents of the header entry. See Filling in the Header Entry, for a description of the various fields in the header entry.
Check for conflicts between domain directives and the --output-file
option
Check that GNU msgfmt behaves like X/Open msgfmt. This will give an error when attempting to use the GNU extensions.
Check presence of keyboard accelerators for menu items. This is based on the convention used in some GUIs that a keyboard accelerator in a menu item string is designated by an immediately preceding ‘&’ character. Sometimes a keyboard accelerator is also called "keyboard mnemonic". This check verifies that if the untranslated string has exactly one ‘&’ character, the translated string has exactly one ‘&’ as well. If this option is given with a char argument, this char should be a non-alphanumeric character and is used as keyboard accelerator mark instead of ‘&’.
Use fuzzy entries in output. Note that using this option is usually wrong, because fuzzy messages are exactly those which have not been validated by a human translator.
Don’t convert the messages to UTF-8 encoding. By default, messages are converted to UTF-8 encoding before being stored in a MO file; this helps avoiding conversions at run time, since nowadays most locales use the UTF-8 encoding.
Don’t pre-expand ISO C 99 <inttypes.h> format string directive macros.
By default, messages that are marked as c-format and contain
ISO C 99 <inttypes.h> format string directive macros are pre-expanded
for selected platforms, and these redundant expansions are stored in the
MO file. These redundant expansions make the translations of these
messages work with the gettext implementation in the libc
of that platform, without requiring GNU gettext’s libintl.
The platforms that benefit from this pre-expansion are those with the
musl libc.
Align strings to number bytes (default: 1).
Write out 32-bit numbers in the given byte order. The possible values are
big and little. The default is little.
MO files of any endianness can be used on any platform. When a MO file has an endianness other than the platform’s one, the 32-bit numbers from the MO file are swapped at runtime. The performance impact is negligible.
This option can be useful to produce MO files that are optimized for one platform.
Don’t include a hash table in the binary file. Lookup will be more expensive at run time (binary search instead of hash table lookup).
Display this help and exit.
Output version information and exit.
Print statistics about translations. When the option --verbose is used
in combination with --statistics, the input file name is printed in
front of the statistics line.
Increase verbosity level.
Next: The Format of GNU MO Files, Previous: Invoking the msgfmt Program, Up: Producing Binary MO Files [Contents][Index]
msgunfmt Programmsgunfmt [option] [file]...
The msgunfmt program converts a binary message catalog to a
Uniforum style .po file.
Input .mo files.
If no input file is given or if it is ‘-’, standard input is read.
Specify the resource name.
Specify the locale name, either a language specification of the form ll or a combined language and country specification of the form ll_CC.
The class name is determined by appending the locale name to the resource name,
separated with an underscore. The class is located using the CLASSPATH.
Specify the resource name.
Specify the locale name, either a language specification of the form ll or a combined language and country specification of the form ll_CC.
Specify the base directory for locale dependent .dll files.
The ‘-l’ and ‘-d’ options are mandatory. The .msg file is located in a subdirectory of the specified directory whose name depends on the locale.
Specify the locale name, either a language specification of the form ll or a combined language and country specification of the form ll_CC.
Specify the base directory of .msg message catalogs.
The ‘-l’ and ‘-d’ options are mandatory. The .msg file is located in the specified directory.
Write output to specified file.
The results are written to standard output if no output file is specified or if it is ‘-’.
Specify whether or when to use colors and other text attributes.
See The --color option for details.
Specify the CSS style rule file to use for --color.
See The --style option for details.
Always write an output file even if it contains no message.
Write the .po file using indented style.
Write out a strict Uniforum conforming PO file. Note that this Uniforum format should be avoided because it doesn’t support the GNU extensions.
Write out a Java ResourceBundle in Java .properties syntax. Note
that this file format doesn’t support plural forms and silently drops
obsolete messages.
Write out a NeXTstep/GNUstep localized resource file in .strings syntax.
Note that this file format doesn’t support plural forms.
Set the output page width. Long strings in the output files will be split across multiple lines in order to ensure that each line’s width (= number of screen columns) is less or equal to the given number.
Do not break long message lines. Message lines whose width exceeds the output page width will not be split into several lines. Only file reference lines which are wider than the output page width will be split.
Generate sorted output. Note that using this option makes it much harder for the translator to understand each message’s context.
Previous: Invoking the msgunfmt Program, Up: Producing Binary MO Files [Contents][Index]
The format of the generated MO files is best described by a picture, which appears below.
The first two words serve the identification of the file. The magic
number will always signal GNU MO files. The number is stored in the
byte order used when the MO file was generated, so the magic number
really is two numbers: 0x950412de and 0xde120495.
The second word describes the current revision of the file format, composed of a major and a minor revision number. The revision numbers ensure that the readers of MO files can distinguish new formats from old ones and handle their contents, as far as possible. For now the major revision is 0 or 1, and the minor revision is also 0 or 1. More revisions might be added in the future. A program seeing an unexpected major revision number should stop reading the MO file entirely; whereas an unexpected minor revision number means that the file can be read but will not reveal its full contents, when parsed by a program that supports only smaller minor revision numbers.
The version is kept separate from the magic number, instead of using different magic numbers for different formats, mainly because /etc/magic is not updated often.
Follow a number of pointers to later tables in the file, allowing for the extension of the prefix part of MO files without having to recompile programs reading them. This might become useful for later inserting a few flag bits, indication about the charset used, new tables, or other things.
Then, at offset O and offset T in the picture, two tables of string descriptors can be found. In both tables, each string descriptor uses two 32 bits integers, one for the string length, another for the offset of the string in the MO file, counting in bytes from the start of the file. The first table contains descriptors for the original strings, and is sorted so the original strings are in increasing lexicographical order. The second table contains descriptors for the translated strings, and is parallel to the first table: to find the corresponding translation one has to access the array slot in the second array with the same index.
Having the original strings sorted enables the use of simple binary
search, for when the MO file does not contain an hashing table, or
for when it is not practical to use the hashing table provided in
the MO file. This also has another advantage, as the empty string
in a PO file GNU gettext is usually translated into
some system information attached to that particular MO file, and the
empty string necessarily becomes the first in both the original and
translated tables, making the system information very easy to find.
The size S of the hash table can be zero. In this case, the
hash table itself is not contained in the MO file. Some people might
prefer this because a precomputed hashing table takes disk space, and
does not win that much speed. The hash table contains indices
to the sorted array of strings in the MO file. Conflict resolution is
done by double hashing. The precise hashing algorithm used is fairly
dependent on GNU gettext code, and is not documented here.
As for the strings themselves, they follow the hash file, and each
is terminated with a NUL, and this NUL is not counted in
the length which appears in the string descriptor. The msgfmt
program has an option selecting the alignment for MO file strings.
With this option, each string is separately aligned so it starts at
an offset which is a multiple of the alignment value. On some RISC
machines, a correct alignment will speed things up.
Contexts are stored by storing the concatenation of the context, a EOT byte, and the original string, instead of the original string.
Plural forms are stored by letting the plural of the original string follow the singular of the original string, separated through a NUL byte. The length which appears in the string descriptor includes both. However, only the singular of the original string takes part in the hash table lookup. The plural variants of the translation are all stored consecutively, separated through a NUL byte. Here also, the length in the string descriptor includes all of them.
The character encoding of the strings can be any standard ASCII-compatible
encoding, such as UTF-8, ISO-8859-1, EUC-JP, etc., as long as the
encoding’s name is stated in the header entry (see Filling in the Header Entry).
Starting with GNU gettext version 0.22, the MO files produced by
msgfmt have them in UTF-8 encoding, unless the msgfmt
option ‘--no-convert’ is used.
Nothing prevents a MO file from having embedded NULs in strings. However, the program interface currently used already presumes that strings are NUL terminated, so embedded NULs are somewhat useless. But the MO file format is general enough so other interfaces would be later possible, if for example, we ever want to implement wide characters right in MO files, where NUL bytes may accidentally appear. (No, we don’t want to have wide characters in MO files. They would make the file unnecessarily large, and the ‘wchar_t’ type being platform dependent, MO files would be platform dependent as well.)
This particular issue has been strongly debated in the GNU
gettext development forum, and it is expectable that MO file
format will evolve or change over time. It is even possible that many
formats may later be supported concurrently. But surely, we have to
start somewhere, and the MO file format described here is a good start.
Nothing is cast in concrete, and the format may later evolve fairly
easily, so we should feel comfortable with the current approach.
byte
+------------------------------------------+
0 | magic number = 0x950412de |
| |
4 | file format revision = 0 |
| |
8 | number of strings | == N
| |
12 | offset of table with original strings | == O
| |
16 | offset of table with translation strings | == T
| |
20 | size of hashing table | == S
| |
24 | offset of hashing table | == H
| |
. .
. (possibly more entries later) .
. .
| |
O | length & offset 0th string ----------------.
O + 8 | length & offset 1st string ------------------.
... ... | |
O + ((N-1)*8)| length & offset (N-1)th string | | |
| | | |
T | length & offset 0th translation ---------------.
T + 8 | length & offset 1st translation -----------------.
... ... | | | |
T + ((N-1)*8)| length & offset (N-1)th translation | | | | |
| | | | | |
H | start hash table | | | | |
... ... | | | |
H + S * 4 | end hash table | | | | |
| | | | | |
| NUL terminated 0th string <----------------' | | |
| | | | |
| NUL terminated 1st string <------------------' | |
| | | |
... ... | |
| | | |
| NUL terminated 0th translation <---------------' |
| | |
| NUL terminated 1st translation <-----------------'
| |
... ...
| |
+------------------------------------------+
Next: The Translator’s View, Previous: Producing Binary MO Files, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
One aim of the current message catalog implementation provided by
GNU gettext was to use the system’s message catalog handling, if the
installer wishes to do so. So we perhaps should first take a look at
the solutions we know about. The people in the POSIX committee did not
manage to agree on one of the semi-official standards which we’ll
describe below. In fact they couldn’t agree on anything, so they decided
only to include an example of an interface. The major Unix vendors
are split in the usage of the two most important specifications: X/Open’s
catgets vs. Uniforum’s gettext interface. We’ll describe them both and
later explain our solution of this dilemma.
catgetsgettextgettext grok
Next: About gettext, Up: The Programmer’s View [Contents][Index]
catgetsThe catgets implementation is defined in the X/Open Portability
Guide, Volume 3, XSI Supplementary Definitions, Chapter 5. But the
process of creating this standard seemed to be too slow for some of
the Unix vendors so they created their implementations on preliminary
versions of the standard. Of course this leads again to problems while
writing platform independent programs: even the usage of catgets
does not guarantee a unique interface.
Another, personal comment on this that only a bunch of committee members could have made this interface. They never really tried to program using this interface. It is a fast, memory-saving implementation, an user can happily live with it. But programmers hate it (at least I and some others do…)
But we must not forget one point: after all the trouble with transferring the rights on Unix they at last came to X/Open, the very same who published this specification. This leads me to making the prediction that this interface will be in future Unix standards (e.g. Spec1170) and therefore part of all Unix implementation (implementations, which are allowed to wear this name).
Next: Problems with the catgets Interface?!, Up: About catgets [Contents][Index]
The interface to the catgets implementation consists of three
functions which correspond to those used in file access: catopen
to open the catalog for using, catgets for accessing the message
tables, and catclose for closing after work is done. Prototypes
for the functions and the needed definitions are in the
<nl_types.h> header file.
catopen is used like in this:
nl_catd catd = catopen ("catalog_name", 0);
The function takes as the argument the name of the catalog. This usual
refers to the name of the program or the package. The second parameter
is not further specified in the standard. I don’t even know whether it
is implemented consistently among various systems. So the common advice
is to use 0 as the value. The return value is a handle to the
message catalog, equivalent to handles to file returned by open.
This handle is of course used in the catgets function which can
be used like this:
char *translation = catgets (catd, set_no, msg_id, "original string");
The first parameter is this catalog descriptor. The second parameter
specifies the set of messages in this catalog, in which the message
described by msg_id is obtained. catgets therefore uses a
three-stage addressing:
catalog name ⇒ set number ⇒ message ID ⇒ translation
The fourth argument is not used to address the translation. It is given
as a default value in case when one of the addressing stages fail. One
important thing to remember is that although the return type of catgets
is char * the resulting string must not be changed. It
should better be const char *, but the standard is published in
1988, one year before ANSI C.
The last of these functions is used and behaves as expected:
catclose (catd);
After this no catgets call using the descriptor is legal anymore.
Previous: The Interface, Up: About catgets [Contents][Index]
catgets Interface?!Now that this description seemed to be really easy — where are the
problems we speak of? In fact the interface could be used in a
reasonable way, but constructing the message catalogs is a pain. The
reason for this lies in the third argument of catgets: the unique
message ID. This has to be a numeric value for all messages in a single
set. Perhaps you could imagine the problems keeping such a list while
changing the source code. Add a new message here, remove one there. Of
course there have been developed a lot of tools helping to organize this
chaos but one as the other fails in one aspect or the other. We don’t
want to say that the other approach has no problems but they are far
more easy to manage.
Next: Comparing the Two Interfaces, Previous: About catgets, Up: The Programmer’s View [Contents][Index]
gettextThe definition of the gettext interface comes from a Uniforum
proposal. It was submitted there by Sun, who had implemented the
gettext function in SunOS 4, around 1990. Nowadays, the
gettext interface is specified by the OpenI18N standard.
The main point about this solution is that it does not follow the method of normal file handling (open-use-close) and that it does not burden the programmer with so many tasks, especially the unique key handling. Of course here also a unique key is needed, but this key is the message itself (how long or short it is). See Comparing the Two Interfaces for a more detailed comparison of the two methods.
The following section contains a rather detailed description of the
interface. We make it that detailed because this is the interface
we chose for the GNU gettext Library. Programmers interested
in using this library will be interested in this description.
gettext uses
Next: Solving Ambiguities, Up: About gettext [Contents][Index]
The minimal functionality an interface must have is a) to select a domain the strings are coming from (a single domain for all programs is not reasonable because its construction and maintenance is difficult, perhaps impossible) and b) to access a string in a selected domain.
This is principally the description of the gettext interface. It
has a global domain which unqualified usages reference. Of course this
domain is selectable by the user.
char *textdomain (const char *domain_name);
This provides the possibility to change or query the current status of
the current global domain of the LC_MESSAGE category. The
argument is a null-terminated string, whose characters must be legal in
the use in filenames. If the domain_name argument is NULL,
the function returns the current value. If no value has been set
before, the name of the default domain is returned: messages.
Please note that although the return value of textdomain is of
type char * no changing is allowed. It is also important to know
that no checks of the availability are made. If the name is not
available you will see this by the fact that no translations are provided.
To use a domain set by textdomain the function
char *gettext (const char *msgid);
is to be used. This is the simplest reasonable form one can imagine.
The translation of the string msgid is returned if it is available
in the current domain. If it is not available, the argument itself is
returned. If the argument is NULL the result is undefined.
One thing which should come into mind is that no explicit dependency to
the used domain is given. The current value of the domain is used.
If this changes between two
executions of the same gettext call in the program, both calls
reference a different message catalog.
For the easiest case, which is normally used in internationalized
packages, once at the beginning of execution a call to textdomain
is issued, setting the domain to a unique name, normally the package
name. In the following code all strings which have to be translated are
filtered through the gettext function. That’s all, the package speaks
your language.
Next: Locating Message Catalog Files, Previous: The Interface, Up: About gettext [Contents][Index]
While this single name domain works well for most applications there
might be the need to get translations from more than one domain. Of
course one could switch between different domains with calls to
textdomain, but this is really not convenient nor is it fast. A
possible situation could be one case subject to discussion during this
writing: all
error messages of functions in the set of common used functions should
go into a separate domain error. By this mean we would only need
to translate them once.
Another case are messages from a library, as these have to be
independent of the current domain set by the application.
For this reasons there are two more functions to retrieve strings:
char *dgettext (const char *domain_name, const char *msgid);
char *dcgettext (const char *domain_name, const char *msgid,
int category);
Both take an additional argument at the first place, which corresponds
to the argument of textdomain. The third argument of
dcgettext allows to use another locale category but LC_MESSAGES.
But I really don’t know where this can be useful. If the
domain_name is NULL or category has an value beside
the known ones, the result is undefined. It should also be noted that
this function is not part of the second known implementation of this
function family, the one found in Solaris.
A second ambiguity can arise by the fact, that perhaps more than one domain has the same name. This can be solved by specifying where the needed message catalog files can be found.
char *bindtextdomain (const char *domain_name,
const char *dir_name);
Calling this function binds the given domain to a file in the specified
directory (how this file is determined follows below). Especially a
file in the systems default place is not favored against the specified
file anymore (as it would be by solely using textdomain). A
NULL pointer for the dir_name parameter returns the binding
associated with domain_name. If domain_name itself is
NULL nothing happens and a NULL pointer is returned. Here
again as for all the other functions is true that none of the return
value must be changed!
It is important to remember that relative path names for the
dir_name parameter can be trouble. Since the path is always
computed relative to the current directory different results will be
achieved when the program executes a chdir command. Relative
paths should always be avoided to avoid dependencies and
unreliabilities.
wchar_t *wbindtextdomain (const char *domain_name,
const wchar_t *dir_name);
This function is provided only on native Windows platforms. It is like
bindtextdomain, except that the dir_name parameter is a
wide string (in UTF-16 encoding, as usual on Windows).
Next: How to specify the output character set gettext uses, Previous: Solving Ambiguities, Up: About gettext [Contents][Index]
Because many different languages for many different packages have to be
stored we need some way to add these information to file message catalog
files. The way usually used in Unix environments is have this encoding
in the file name. This is also done here. The directory name given in
bindtextdomains second argument (or the default directory),
followed by the name of the locale, the locale category, and the domain name
are concatenated:
dir_name/locale/LC_category/domain_name.mo
The default value for dir_name is system specific. For the GNU library, and for packages adhering to its conventions, it’s:
/usr/local/share/locale
locale is the name of the locale category which is designated by
LC_category. For gettext and dgettext this
LC_category is always LC_MESSAGES.3
The name of the locale category is determined through
setlocale (LC_category, NULL).
4
When using the function dcgettext, you can specify the locale category
through the third argument.
Next: Using contexts for solving ambiguities, Previous: Locating Message Catalog Files, Up: About gettext [Contents][Index]
gettext usesgettext not only looks up a translation in a message catalog. It
also converts the translation on the fly to the desired output character
set. This is useful if the user is working in a different character set
than the translator who created the message catalog, because it avoids
distributing variants of message catalogs which differ only in the
character set.
The output character set is, by default, the value of nl_langinfo
(CODESET), which depends on the LC_CTYPE part of the current
locale. But programs which store strings in a locale independent way
(e.g. UTF-8) can request that gettext and related functions
return the translations in that encoding, by use of the
bind_textdomain_codeset function.
Note that the msgid argument to gettext is not subject to
character set conversion. Also, when gettext does not find a
translation for msgid, it returns msgid unchanged –
independently of the current output character set. It is therefore
recommended that all msgids be US-ASCII strings.
The bind_textdomain_codeset function can be used to specify the
output character set for message catalogs for domain domainname.
The codeset argument must be a valid codeset name which can be used
for the iconv_open function, or a null pointer.
If the codeset parameter is the null pointer,
bind_textdomain_codeset returns the currently selected codeset
for the domain with the name domainname. It returns NULL if
no codeset has yet been selected.
The bind_textdomain_codeset function can be used several times.
If used multiple times with the same domainname argument, the
later call overrides the settings made by the earlier one.
The bind_textdomain_codeset function returns a pointer to a
string containing the name of the selected codeset. The string is
allocated internally in the function and must not be changed by the
user. If the system went out of core during the execution of
bind_textdomain_codeset, the return value is NULL and the
global variable errno is set accordingly.
Next: Additional functions for plural forms, Previous: How to specify the output character set gettext uses, Up: About gettext [Contents][Index]
One place where the gettext functions, if used normally, have big
problems is within programs with graphical user interfaces (GUIs). The
problem is that many of the strings which have to be translated are very
short. They have to appear in pull-down menus which restricts the
length. But strings which are not containing entire sentences or at
least large fragments of a sentence may appear in more than one
situation in the program but might have different translations. This is
especially true for the one-word strings which are frequently used in
GUI programs.
As a consequence many people say that the gettext approach is
wrong and instead catgets should be used which indeed does not
have this problem. But there is a very simple and powerful method to
handle this kind of problems with the gettext functions.
Contexts can be added to strings to be translated. A context dependent translation lookup is when a translation for a given string is searched, that is limited to a given context. The translation for the same string in a different context can be different. The different translations of the same string in different contexts can be stored in the in the same MO file, and can be edited by the translator in the same PO file.
The gettext.h include file contains the lookup macros for strings
with contexts. They are implemented as thin macros and inline functions
over the functions from <libintl.h>.
const char *pgettext (const char *msgctxt, const char *msgid);
In a call of this macro, msgctxt and msgid must be string literals. The macro returns the translation of msgid, restricted to the context given by msgctxt.
The msgctxt string is visible in the PO file to the translator. You should try to make it somehow canonical and never changing. Because every time you change an msgctxt, the translator will have to review the translation of msgid.
Finding a canonical msgctxt string that doesn’t change over time can
be hard. But you shouldn’t use the file name or class name containing the
pgettext call – because it is a common development task to rename
a file or a class, and it shouldn’t cause translator work. Also you shouldn’t
use a comment in the form of a complete English sentence as msgctxt –
because orthography or grammar changes are often applied to such sentences,
and again, it shouldn’t force the translator to do a review.
The ‘p’ in ‘pgettext’ stands for “particular”: pgettext
fetches a particular translation of the msgid.
const char *dpgettext (const char *domain_name,
const char *msgctxt, const char *msgid);
const char *dcpgettext (const char *domain_name,
const char *msgctxt, const char *msgid,
int category);
These are generalizations of pgettext. They behave similarly to
dgettext and dcgettext, respectively. The domain_name
argument defines the translation domain. The category argument
allows to use another locale category than LC_MESSAGES.
As as example consider the following fictional situation. A GUI program has a menu bar with the following entries:
+------------+------------+--------------------------------------+
| File | Printer | |
+------------+------------+--------------------------------------+
| Open | | Select |
| New | | Open |
+----------+ | Connect |
+----------+
To have the strings File, Printer, Open,
New, Select, and Connect translated there has to be
at some point in the code a call to a function of the gettext
family. But in two places the string passed into the function would be
Open. The translations might not be the same and therefore we
are in the dilemma described above.
What distinguishes the two places is the menu path from the menu root to the particular menu entries:
Menu|File Menu|Printer Menu|File|Open Menu|File|New Menu|Printer|Select Menu|Printer|Open Menu|Printer|Connect
The context is thus the menu path without its last part. So, the calls look like this:
pgettext ("Menu|", "File")
pgettext ("Menu|", "Printer")
pgettext ("Menu|File|", "Open")
pgettext ("Menu|File|", "New")
pgettext ("Menu|Printer|", "Select")
pgettext ("Menu|Printer|", "Open")
pgettext ("Menu|Printer|", "Connect")
Whether or not to use the ‘|’ character at the end of the context is a matter of style.
For more complex cases, where the msgctxt or msgid are not string literals, more general macros are available:
const char *pgettext_expr (const char *msgctxt, const char *msgid);
const char *dpgettext_expr (const char *domain_name,
const char *msgctxt, const char *msgid);
const char *dcpgettext_expr (const char *domain_name,
const char *msgctxt, const char *msgid,
int category);
Here msgctxt and msgid can be arbitrary string-valued expressions. These macros are more general. But in the case that both argument expressions are string literals, the macros without the ‘_expr’ suffix are more efficient.
Next: Optimization of the *gettext functions, Previous: Using contexts for solving ambiguities, Up: About gettext [Contents][Index]
The functions of the gettext family described so far (and all the
catgets functions as well) have one problem in the real world
which have been neglected completely in all existing approaches. What
is meant here is the handling of plural forms.
Looking through Unix source code before the time anybody thought about internationalization (and, sadly, even afterwards) one can often find code similar to the following:
printf ("%d file%s deleted", n, n == 1 ? "" : "s");
After the first complaints from people internationalizing the code people
either completely avoided formulations like this or used strings like
"file(s)". Both look unnatural and should be avoided. First
tries to solve the problem correctly looked like this:
if (n == 1)
printf ("%d file deleted", n);
else
printf ("%d files deleted", n);
But this does not solve the problem. It helps languages where the
plural form of a noun is not simply constructed by adding an
‘s’
but that is all. Once again people fell into the trap of believing the
rules their language is using are universal. But the handling of plural
forms differs widely between the language families. For example,
Rafal Maszkowski <rzm@mat.uni.torun.pl> reports:
In Polish we use e.g. plik (file) this way:
1 plik 2,3,4 pliki 5-21 pliko'w 22-24 pliki 25-31 pliko'wand so on (o’ means 8859-2 oacute which should be rather okreska, similar to aogonek).
There are two things which can differ between languages (and even inside language families);
But other language families have only one form or many forms. More information on this in an extra section.
The consequence of this is that application writers should not try to
solve the problem in their code. This would be localization since it is
only usable for certain, hardcoded language environments. Instead the
extended gettext interface should be used.
These extra functions are taking instead of the one key string two
strings and a numerical argument. The idea behind this is that using
the numerical argument and the first string as a key, the implementation
can select using rules specified by the translator the right plural
form. The two string arguments then will be used to provide a return
value in case no message catalog is found (similar to the normal
gettext behavior). In this case the rules for Germanic language
is used and it is assumed that the first string argument is the singular
form, the second the plural form.
This has the consequence that programs without language catalogs can
display the correct strings only if the program itself is written using
a Germanic language. This is a limitation but since the GNU C library
(as well as the GNU gettext package) are written as part of the
GNU package and the coding standards for the GNU project require program
being written in English, this solution nevertheless fulfills its
purpose.
The ngettext function is similar to the gettext function
as it finds the message catalogs in the same way. But it takes two
extra arguments. The msgid1 parameter must contain the singular
form of the string to be converted. It is also used as the key for the
search in the catalog. The msgid2 parameter is the plural form.
The parameter n is used to determine the plural form. If no
message catalog is found msgid1 is returned if n == 1,
otherwise msgid2.
An example for the use of this function is:
printf (ngettext ("%d file removed", "%d files removed", n), n);
Please note that the numeric value n has to be passed to the
printf function as well. It is not sufficient to pass it only to
ngettext.
In the English singular case, the number – always 1 – can be replaced with "one":
printf (ngettext ("One file removed", "%d files removed", n), n);
This works because the ‘printf’ function discards excess arguments that are not consumed by the format string.
If this function is meant to yield a format string that takes two or more arguments, you can not use it like this:
printf (ngettext ("%d file removed from directory %s",
"%d files removed from directory %s",
n),
n, dir);
because in many languages the translators want to replace the ‘%d’ with an explicit word in the singular case, just like “one” in English, and C format strings cannot consume the second argument but skip the first argument. Instead, you have to reorder the arguments so that ‘n’ comes last:
printf (ngettext ("%2$d file removed from directory %1$s",
"%2$d files removed from directory %1$s",
n),
dir, n);
See C Format Strings for details about this argument reordering syntax.
When you know that the value of n is within a given range, you can
specify it as a comment directed to the xgettext tool. This
information may help translators to use more adequate translations. Like
this:
if (days > 7 && days < 14)
/* xgettext: range: 1..6 */
printf (ngettext ("one week and one day", "one week and %d days",
days - 7),
days - 7);
It is also possible to use this function when the strings don’t contain a cardinal number:
puts (ngettext ("Delete the selected file?",
"Delete the selected files?",
n));
In this case the number n is only used to choose the plural form.
The dngettext is similar to the dgettext function in the
way the message catalog is selected. The difference is that it takes
two extra parameter to provide the correct plural form. These two
parameters are handled in the same way ngettext handles them.
The dcngettext is similar to the dcgettext function in the
way the message catalog is selected. The difference is that it takes
two extra parameter to provide the correct plural form. These two
parameters are handled in the same way ngettext handles them.
Now, how do these functions solve the problem of the plural forms? Without the input of linguists (which was not available) it was not possible to determine whether there are only a few different forms in which plural forms are formed or whether the number can increase with every new supported language.
Therefore the solution implemented is to allow the translator to specify the rules of how to select the plural form. Since the formula varies with every language this is the only viable solution except for hardcoding the information in the code (which still would require the possibility of extensions to not prevent the use of new languages).
The information about the plural form selection has to be stored in the
header entry of the PO file (the one with the empty msgid string).
The plural form information looks like this:
Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=n == 1 ? 0 : 1;
The nplurals value must be a decimal number which specifies how
many different plural forms exist for this language. The string
following plural is an expression which is using the C language
syntax. Exceptions are that no negative numbers are allowed, numbers
must be decimal, and the only variable allowed is n. Spaces are
allowed in the expression, but backslash-newlines are not; in the
examples below the backslash-newlines are present for formatting purposes
only. This expression will be evaluated whenever one of the functions
ngettext, dngettext, or dcngettext is called. The
numeric value passed to these functions is then substituted for all uses
of the variable n in the expression. The resulting value then
must be greater or equal to zero and smaller than the value given as the
value of nplurals.
The following rules are known at this point. The language with families are listed. But this does not necessarily mean the information can be generalized for the whole family (as can be easily seen in the table below).5
Some languages only require one single form. There is no distinction between the singular and plural form. An appropriate header entry would look like this:
Plural-Forms: nplurals=1; plural=0;
Languages with this property include:
Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean
Thai
This is the form used in most existing programs since it is what English is using. A header entry would look like this:
Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=n != 1;
(Note: this uses the feature of C expressions that boolean expressions have to value zero or one.)
Languages with this property include:
English, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Faroese
Spanish, Portuguese, Italian
Greek
Bulgarian
Finnish, Estonian
Hebrew
Bahasa Indonesian
Esperanto
Other languages using the same header entry are:
Hungarian
Turkish
Hungarian does not appear to have a plural if you look at sentences involving
cardinal numbers. For example, “1 apple” is “1 alma”, and “123 apples” is
“123 alma”. But when the number is not explicit, the distinction between
singular and plural exists: “the apple” is “az alma”, and “the apples” is
“az almák”. Since ngettext has to support both types of sentences,
it is classified here, under “two forms”.
The same holds for Turkish: “1 apple” is “1 elma”, and “123 apples” is “123 elma”. But when the number is omitted, the distinction between singular and plural exists: “the apple” is “elma”, and “the apples” is “elmalar”.
Exceptional case in the language family. The header entry would be:
Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=n>1;
Languages with this property include:
Brazilian Portuguese, French
The header entry would be:
Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; plural=n%10==1 && n%100!=11 ? 0 : n != 0 ? 1 : 2;
Languages with this property include:
Latvian
The header entry would be:
Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; plural=n==1 ? 0 : n==2 ? 1 : 2;
Languages with this property include:
Gaeilge (Irish)
The header entry would be:
Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; \
plural=n==1 ? 0 : (n==0 || (n%100 > 0 && n%100 < 20)) ? 1 : 2;
Languages with this property include:
Romanian
The header entry would look like this:
Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; \
plural=n%10==1 && n%100!=11 ? 0 : \
n%10>=2 && (n%100<10 || n%100>=20) ? 1 : 2;
Languages with this property include:
Lithuanian
The header entry would look like this:
Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; \
plural=n%10==1 && n%100!=11 ? 0 : \
n%10>=2 && n%10<=4 && (n%100<10 || n%100>=20) ? 1 : 2;
Languages with this property include:
Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Serbian, Croatian
The header entry would look like this:
Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; \
plural=(n==1) ? 0 : (n>=2 && n<=4) ? 1 : 2;
Languages with this property include:
Czech, Slovak
The header entry would look like this:
Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; \
plural=n==1 ? 0 : \
n%10>=2 && n%10<=4 && (n%100<10 || n%100>=20) ? 1 : 2;
Languages with this property include:
Polish
The header entry would look like this:
Plural-Forms: nplurals=4; \
plural=n%100==1 ? 0 : n%100==2 ? 1 : n%100==3 || n%100==4 ? 2 : 3;
Languages with this property include:
Slovenian
The header entry would look like this:
Plural-Forms: nplurals=6; \
plural=n==0 ? 0 : n==1 ? 1 : n==2 ? 2 : n%100>=3 && n%100<=10 ? 3 \
: n%100>=11 ? 4 : 5;
Languages with this property include:
Arabic
You might now ask, ngettext handles only numbers n of type
‘unsigned long’. What about larger integer types? What about negative
numbers? What about floating-point numbers?
About larger integer types, such as ‘uintmax_t’ or
‘unsigned long long’: they can be handled by reducing the value to a
range that fits in an ‘unsigned long’. Simply casting the value to
‘unsigned long’ would not do the right thing, since it would treat
ULONG_MAX + 1 like zero, ULONG_MAX + 2 like singular, and
the like. Here you can exploit the fact that all mentioned plural form
formulas eventually become periodic, with a period that is a divisor of 100
(or 1000 or 1000000). So, when you reduce a large value to another one in
the range [1000000, 1999999] that ends in the same 6 decimal digits, you
can assume that it will lead to the same plural form selection. This code
does this:
#include <inttypes.h>
uintmax_t nbytes = ...;
printf (ngettext ("The file has %"PRIuMAX" byte.",
"The file has %"PRIuMAX" bytes.",
(nbytes > ULONG_MAX
? (nbytes % 1000000) + 1000000
: nbytes)),
nbytes);
Negative and floating-point values usually represent physical entities for
which singular and plural don’t clearly apply. In such cases, there is no
need to use ngettext; a simple gettext call with a form suitable
for all values will do. For example:
printf (gettext ("Time elapsed: %.3f seconds"),
num_milliseconds * 0.001);
Even if num_milliseconds happens to be a multiple of 1000, the output
Time elapsed: 1.000 seconds
is acceptable in English, and similarly for other languages.
The translators’ perspective regarding plural forms is explained in Translating plural forms.
Previous: Additional functions for plural forms, Up: About gettext [Contents][Index]
At this point of the discussion we should talk about an advantage of the
GNU gettext implementation. Some readers might have pointed out
that an internationalized program might have a poor performance if some
string has to be translated in an inner loop. While this is unavoidable
when the string varies from one run of the loop to the other it is
simply a waste of time when the string is always the same. Take the
following example:
{
while (…)
{
puts (gettext ("Hello world"));
}
}
When the locale selection does not change between two runs the resulting string is always the same. One way to use this is:
{
str = gettext ("Hello world");
while (…)
{
puts (str);
}
}
But this solution is not usable in all situation (e.g. when the locale selection changes) nor does it lead to legible code.
For this reason, GNU gettext caches previous translation results.
When the same translation is requested twice, with no new message
catalogs being loaded in between, gettext will, the second time,
find the result through a single cache lookup.
Next: Using libintl.a in own programs, Previous: About gettext, Up: The Programmer’s View [Contents][Index]
The following discussion is perhaps a little bit colored. As said
above we implemented GNU gettext following the Uniforum
proposal and this surely has its reasons. But it should show how we
came to this decision.
First we take a look at the developing process. When we write an
application using NLS provided by gettext we proceed as always.
Only when we come to a string which might be seen by the users and thus
has to be translated we use gettext("…") instead of
"…". At the beginning of each source file (or in a central
header file) we define
#define gettext(String) (String)
Even this definition can be avoided when the system supports the
gettext function in its C library. When we compile this code the
result is the same as if no NLS code is used. When you take a look at
the GNU gettext code you will see that we use _("…")
instead of gettext("…"). This reduces the number of
additional characters per translatable string to 3 (in words:
three).
When now a production version of the program is needed we simply replace the definition
#define _(String) (String)
by
#include <libintl.h> #define _(String) gettext (String)
Additionally we run the program xgettext on all source code file which contain translatable strings and that’s it: we have a running program which does not depend on translations to be available, but which can use any that becomes available.
The same procedure can be done for the gettext_noop invocations
(see Special Cases of Translatable Strings). One usually defines gettext_noop as a
no-op macro. So you should consider the following code for your project:
#define gettext_noop(String) String #define N_(String) gettext_noop (String)
N_ is a short form similar to _. The Makefile in
the po/ directory of GNU gettext knows by default both of the
mentioned short forms so you are invited to follow this proposal for
your own ease.
Now to catgets. The main problem is the work for the
programmer. Every time he comes to a translatable string he has to
define a number (or a symbolic constant) which has also be defined in
the message catalog file. He also has to take care for duplicate
entries, duplicate message IDs etc. If he wants to have the same
quality in the message catalog as the GNU gettext program
provides he also has to put the descriptive comments for the strings and
the location in all source code files in the message catalog. This is
nearly a Mission: Impossible.
But there are also some points people might call advantages speaking for
catgets. If you have a single word in a string and this string
is used in different contexts it is likely that in one or the other
language the word has different translations. Example:
printf ("%s: %d", gettext ("number"), number_of_errors)
printf ("you should see %d %s", number_count,
number_count == 1 ? gettext ("number") : gettext ("numbers"))
Here we have to translate two times the string "number". Even
if you do not speak a language beside English it might be possible to
recognize that the two words have a different meaning. In German the
first appearance has to be translated to "Anzahl" and the second
to "Zahl".
Now you can say that this example is really esoteric. And you are right! This is exactly how we felt about this problem and decide that it does not weight that much. The solution for the above problem could be very easy:
printf ("%s %d", gettext ("number:"), number_of_errors)
printf (number_count == 1 ? gettext ("you should see %d number")
: gettext ("you should see %d numbers"),
number_count)
We believe that we can solve all conflicts with this method. If it is difficult one can also consider changing one of the conflicting string a little bit. But it is not impossible to overcome.
catgets allows same original entry to have different translations,
but gettext has another, scalable approach for solving ambiguities
of this kind: See Solving Ambiguities.
Next: Being a gettext grok, Previous: Comparing the Two Interfaces, Up: The Programmer’s View [Contents][Index]
Starting with version 0.9.4 the library libintl.h should be
self-contained. I.e., you can use it in your own programs without
providing additional functions. The Makefile will put the header
and the library in directories selected using the $(prefix).
Next: Temporary Notes for the Programmers Chapter, Previous: Using libintl.a in own programs, Up: The Programmer’s View [Contents][Index]
gettext grokNOTE: This documentation section is outdated and needs to be revised.
To fully exploit the functionality of the GNU gettext library it
is surely helpful to read the source code. But for those who don’t want
to spend that much time in reading the (sometimes complicated) code here
is a list comments:
For interactive programs it might be useful to offer a selection of the
used language at runtime. To understand how to do this one need to know
how the used language is determined while executing the gettext
function. The method which is presented here only works correctly
with the GNU implementation of the gettext functions.
In the function dcgettext at every call the current setting of
the highest priority environment variable is determined and used.
Highest priority means here the following list with decreasing
priority:
LANGUAGE
LC_ALL
LC_xxx, according to selected locale category
LANG
Afterwards the path is constructed using the found value and the translation file is loaded if available.
What happens now when the value for, say, LANGUAGE changes? According
to the process explained above the new value of this variable is found
as soon as the dcgettext function is called. But this also means
the (perhaps) different message catalog file is loaded. In other
words: the used language is changed.
But there is one little hook. The code for gcc-2.7.0 and up provides
some optimization. This optimization normally prevents the calling of
the dcgettext function as long as no new catalog is loaded. But
if dcgettext is not called the program also cannot find the
LANGUAGE variable be changed (see Optimization of the *gettext functions). A
solution for this is very easy. Include the following code in the
language switching function.
/* Change language. */
setenv ("LANGUAGE", "fr", 1);
/* Make change known. */
{
extern int _nl_msg_cat_cntr;
++_nl_msg_cat_cntr;
}
The variable _nl_msg_cat_cntr is defined in loadmsgcat.c.
You don’t need to know what this is for. But it can be used to detect
whether a gettext implementation is GNU gettext and not non-GNU
system’s native gettext implementation.
Previous: Being a gettext grok, Up: The Programmer’s View [Contents][Index]
NOTE: This documentation section is outdated and needs to be revised.
catgetsThere are two competing methods for language independent messages:
the X/Open catgets method, and the Uniforum gettext
method. The catgets method indexes messages by integers; the
gettext method indexes them by their English translations.
The catgets method has been around longer and is supported
by more vendors. The gettext method is supported by Sun,
and it has been heard that the COSE multi-vendor initiative is
supporting it. Neither method is a POSIX standard; the POSIX.1
committee had a lot of disagreement in this area.
Neither one is in the POSIX standard. There was much disagreement
in the POSIX.1 committee about using the gettext routines
vs. catgets (XPG). In the end the committee couldn’t
agree on anything, so no messaging system was included as part
of the standard. I believe the informative annex of the standard
includes the XPG3 messaging interfaces, “…as an example of
a messaging system that has been implemented…”
They were very careful not to say anywhere that you should use one set of interfaces over the other. For more on this topic please see the Programming for Internationalization FAQ.
Next: Temporary - Why a single implementation, Previous: Temporary - Two Possible Implementations, Up: Temporary Notes for the Programmers Chapter [Contents][Index]
catgetsThere have been a few discussions of late on the use of
catgets as a base. I think it important to present both
sides of the argument and hence am opting to play devil’s advocate
for a little bit.
I’ll not deny the fact that catgets could have been designed
a lot better. It currently has quite a number of limitations and
these have already been pointed out.
However there is a great deal to be said for consistency and standardization. A common recurring problem when writing Unix software is the myriad portability problems across Unix platforms. It seems as if every Unix vendor had a look at the operating system and found parts they could improve upon. Undoubtedly, these modifications are probably innovative and solve real problems. However, software developers have a hard time keeping up with all these changes across so many platforms.
And this has prompted the Unix vendors to begin to standardize their systems. Hence the impetus for Spec1170. Every major Unix vendor has committed to supporting this standard and every Unix software developer waits with glee the day they can write software to this standard and simply recompile (without having to use autoconf) across different platforms.
As I understand it, Spec1170 is roughly based upon version 4 of the
X/Open Portability Guidelines (XPG4). Because catgets and
friends are defined in XPG4, I’m led to believe that catgets
is a part of Spec1170 and hence will become a standardized component
of all Unix systems.
Next: Temporary - Notes, Previous: Temporary - About catgets, Up: Temporary Notes for the Programmers Chapter [Contents][Index]
Now it seems kind of wasteful to me to have two different systems
installed for accessing message catalogs. If we do want to remedy
catgets deficiencies why don’t we try to expand catgets
(in a compatible manner) rather than implement an entirely new system.
Otherwise, we’ll end up with two message catalog access systems installed
with an operating system - one set of routines for packages using GNU
gettext for their internationalization, and another set of routines
(catgets) for all other software. Bloated?
Supposing another catalog access system is implemented. Which do
we recommend? At least for Linux, we need to attract as many
software developers as possible. Hence we need to make it as easy
for them to port their software as possible. Which means supporting
catgets. We will be implementing the libintl code
within our libc, but does this mean we also have to incorporate
another message catalog access scheme within our libc as well?
And what about people who are going to be using the libintl
+ non-catgets routines. When they port their software to
other platforms, they’re now going to have to include the front-end
(libintl) code plus the back-end code (the non-catgets
access routines) with their software instead of just including the
libintl code with their software.
Message catalog support is however only the tip of the iceberg.
What about the data for the other locale categories? They also have
a number of deficiencies. Are we going to abandon them as well and
develop another duplicate set of routines (should libintl
expand beyond message catalog support)?
Like many parts of Unix that can be improved upon, we’re stuck with balancing compatibility with the past with useful improvements and innovations for the future.
Previous: Temporary - Why a single implementation, Up: Temporary Notes for the Programmers Chapter [Contents][Index]
X/Open agreed very late on the standard form so that many implementations differ from the final form. Both of my system (old Linux catgets and Ultrix-4) have a strange variation.
OK. After incorporating the last changes I have to spend some time on
making the GNU/Linux libc gettext functions. So in future
Solaris is not the only system having gettext.
Next: The Maintainer’s View, Previous: The Programmer’s View, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
Next: Introduction 1, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
NOTE: This documentation section is outdated and needs to be revised.
Free software is going international! The Translation Project is a way to get maintainers, translators and users all together, so free software will gradually become able to speak many native languages.
The GNU gettext tool set contains everything maintainers
need for internationalizing their packages for messages. It also
contains quite useful tools for helping translators at localizing
messages to their native language, once a package has already been
internationalized.
To achieve the Translation Project, we need many interested people who like their own language and write it well, and who are also able to synergize with other translators speaking the same language. If you’d like to volunteer to work at translating messages, please send mail to your translating team.
Each team has its own mailing list, courtesy of Linux International. You may reach your translating team at the address ll@li.org, replacing ll by the two-letter ISO 639 code for your language. Language codes are not the same as country codes given in ISO 3166. The following translating teams exist:
Chinese
zh, Czechcs, Danishda, Dutchnl, Esperantoeo, Finnishfi, Frenchfr, Irishga, Germande, Greekel, Italianit, Japaneseja, Indonesianin, Norwegianno, Polishpl, Portuguesept, Russianru, Spanishes, Swedishsvand Turkishtr.
For example, you may reach the Chinese translating team by writing to zh@li.org. When you become a member of the translating team for your own language, you may subscribe to its list. For example, Swedish people can send a message to sv-request@li.org, having this message body:
subscribe
Keep in mind that team members should be interested in working at translations, or at solving translational difficulties, rather than merely lurking around. If your team does not exist yet and you want to start one, please write to coordinator@translationproject.org; you will then reach the coordinator for all translator teams.
A handful of GNU packages have already been adapted and provided with message translations for several languages. Translation teams have begun to organize, using these packages as a starting point. But there are many more packages and many languages for which we have no volunteer translators. If you would like to volunteer to work at translating messages, please send mail to coordinator@translationproject.org indicating what language(s) you can work on.
Next: Discussions, Previous: Introduction 0, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
NOTE: This documentation section is outdated and needs to be revised.
This is now official, GNU is going international! Here is the announcement submitted for the January 1995 GNU Bulletin:
A handful of GNU packages have already been adapted and provided with message translations for several languages. Translation teams have begun to organize, using these packages as a starting point. But there are many more packages and many languages for which we have no volunteer translators. If you’d like to volunteer to work at translating messages, please send mail to ‘coordinator@translationproject.org’ indicating what language(s) you can work on.
This document should answer many questions for those who are curious about the process or would like to contribute. Please at least skim over it, hoping to cut down a little of the high volume of e-mail generated by this collective effort towards internationalization of free software.
Most free programming which is widely shared is done in English, and currently, English is used as the main communicating language between national communities collaborating to free software. This very document is written in English. This will not change in the foreseeable future.
However, there is a strong appetite from national communities for having more software able to write using national language and habits, and there is an on-going effort to modify free software in such a way that it becomes able to do so. The experiments driven so far raised an enthusiastic response from pretesters, so we believe that internationalization of free software is dedicated to succeed.
For suggestion clarifications, additions or corrections to this document, please e-mail to coordinator@translationproject.org.
Next: Organization, Previous: Introduction 1, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
NOTE: This documentation section is outdated and needs to be revised.
Facing this internationalization effort, a few users expressed their concerns. Some of these doubts are presented and discussed, here.
Some languages are not spoken by a very large number of people, so people speaking them sometimes consider that there may not be all that much demand such versions of free software packages. Moreover, many people being into computers, in some countries, generally seem to prefer English versions of their software.
On the other end, people might enjoy their own language a lot, and be very motivated at providing to themselves the pleasure of having their beloved free software speaking their mother tongue. They do themselves a personal favor, and do not pay that much attention to the number of people benefiting of their work.
Other users are shy to push forward their own language, seeing in this some kind of misplaced propaganda. Someone thought there must be some users of the language over the networks pestering other people with it.
But any spoken language is worth localization, because there are people behind the language for whom the language is important and dear to their hearts.
The biggest problem is to find the right translations so that everybody can understand the messages. Translations are usually a little odd. Some people get used to English, to the extent they may find translations into their own language “rather pushy, obnoxious and sometimes even hilarious.” As a French speaking man, I have the experience of those instruction manuals for goods, so poorly translated in French in Korea or Taiwan…
The fact is that we sometimes have to create a kind of national computer culture, and this is not easy without the collaboration of many people liking their mother tongue. This is why translations are better achieved by people knowing and loving their own language, and ready to work together at improving the results they obtain.
Some people wonder if using GNU gettext necessarily brings their
package under the protective wing of the GNU General Public License or
the GNU Lesser General Public License, when they do not want to make
their program free, or want other kinds of freedom. The simplest
answer is “normally not”.
The gettext-runtime part of GNU gettext, i.e. the
contents of libintl, is covered by the GNU Lesser General Public
License. The gettext-tools part of GNU gettext, i.e. the
rest of the GNU gettext package, is covered by the GNU General
Public License.
The mere marking of localizable strings in a package, or conditional
inclusion of a few lines for initialization, is not really including
GPL’ed or LGPL’ed code. However, since the localization routines in
libintl are under the LGPL, the LGPL needs to be considered.
It gives the right to distribute the complete unmodified source of
libintl even with non-free programs. It also gives the right
to use libintl as a shared library, even for non-free programs.
But it gives the right to use libintl as a static library or
to incorporate libintl into another library only to free
software.
Next: Information Flow, Previous: Discussions, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
NOTE: This documentation section is outdated and needs to be revised.
On a larger scale, the true solution would be to organize some kind of fairly precise set up in which volunteers could participate. I gave some thought to this idea lately, and realize there will be some touchy points. I thought of writing to Richard Stallman to launch such a project, but feel it might be good to shake out the ideas between ourselves first. Most probably that Linux International has some experience in the field already, or would like to orchestrate the volunteer work, maybe. Food for thought, in any case!
I guess we have to setup something early, somehow, that will help many possible contributors of the same language to interlock and avoid work duplication, and further be put in contact for solving together problems particular to their tongue (in most languages, there are many difficulties peculiar to translating technical English). My Swedish contributor acknowledged these difficulties, and I’m well aware of them for French.
This is surely not a technical issue, but we should manage so the effort of locale contributors be maximally useful, despite the national team layer interface between contributors and maintainers.
The Translation Project needs some setup for coordinating language
coordinators. Localizing evolving programs will surely
become a permanent and continuous activity in the free software community,
once well started.
The setup should be minimally completed and tested before GNU
gettext becomes an official reality. The e-mail address
coordinator@translationproject.org has been set up for receiving
offers from volunteers and general e-mail on these topics. This address
reaches the Translation Project coordinator.
Next: National Teams, Up: Organization [Contents][Index]
I also think GNU will need sooner than it thinks, that someone set up a way to organize and coordinate these groups. Some kind of group of groups. My opinion is that it would be good that GNU delegates this task to a small group of collaborating volunteers, shortly. Perhaps in gnu.announce a list of this national committee’s can be published.
My role as coordinator would simply be to refer to Ulrich any German speaking volunteer interested to localization of free software packages, and maybe helping national groups to initially organize, while maintaining national registries for until national groups are ready to take over. In fact, the coordinator should ease volunteers to get in contact with one another for creating national teams, which should then select one coordinator per language, or country (regionalized language). If well done, the coordination should be useful without being an overwhelming task, the time to put delegations in place.
Next: Mailing Lists, Previous: Central Coordination, Up: Organization [Contents][Index]
I suggest we look for volunteer coordinators/editors for individual languages. These people will scan contributions of translation files for various programs, for their own languages, and will ensure high and uniform standards of diction.
From my current experience with other people in these days, those who provide localizations are very enthusiastic about the process, and are more interested in the localization process than in the program they localize, and want to do many programs, not just one. This seems to confirm that having a coordinator/editor for each language is a good idea.
We need to choose someone who is good at writing clear and concise prose in the language in question. That is hard—we can’t check it ourselves. So we need to ask a few people to judge each others’ writing and select the one who is best.
I announce my prerelease to a few dozen people, and you would not believe all the discussions it generated already. I shudder to think what will happen when this will be launched, for true, officially, world wide. Who am I to arbitrate between two Czekolsovak users contradicting each other, for example?
I assume that your German is not much better than my French so that I would not be able to judge about these formulations. What I would suggest is that for each language there is a group for people who maintain the PO files and judge about changes. I suspect there will be cultural differences between how such groups of people will behave. Some will have relaxed ways, reach consensus easily, and have anyone of the group relate to the maintainers, while others will fight to death, organize heavy administrations up to national standards, and use strict channels.
The German team is putting out a good example. Right now, they are maybe half a dozen people revising translations of each other and discussing the linguistic issues. I do not even have all the names. Ulrich Drepper is taking care of coordinating the German team. He subscribed to all my pretest lists, so I do not even have to warn him specifically of incoming releases.
I’m sure, that is a good idea to get teams for each language working on translations. That will make the translations better and more consistent.
Next: Organizational Ideas, Up: National Teams [Contents][Index]
Taking French for example, there are a few sub-cultures around computers which developed diverging vocabularies. Picking volunteers here and there without addressing this problem in an organized way, soon in the project, might produce a distasteful mix of internationalized programs, and possibly trigger endless quarrels among those who really care.
Keeping some kind of unity in the way French localization of
internationalized programs is achieved is a difficult (and delicate) job.
Knowing the latin character of French people (:-), if we take this
the wrong way, we could end up nowhere, or spoil a lot of energies.
Maybe we should begin to address this problem seriously before
GNU gettext become officially published. And I suspect that this
means soon!
Previous: Sub-Cultures, Up: National Teams [Contents][Index]
I expect the next big changes after the official release. Please note that I use the German translation of the short GPL message. We need to set a few good examples before the localization goes out for true in the free software community. Here are a few points to discuss:
Previous: National Teams, Up: Organization [Contents][Index]
If we get any inquiries about GNU gettext, send them on to:
coordinator@translationproject.org
The *-pretest lists are quite useful to me, maybe the idea could be generalized to many GNU, and non-GNU packages. But each maintainer his/her way!
François, we have a mechanism in place here at gnu.ai.mit.edu to track teams, support mailing lists for them and log members. We have a slight preference that you use it. If this is OK with you, I can get you clued in.
Things are changing! A few years ago, when Daniel Fekete and I
asked for a mailing list for GNU localization, nested at the FSF, we
were politely invited to organize it anywhere else, and so did we.
For communicating with my pretesters, I later made a handful of
mailing lists located at iro.umontreal.ca and administrated by
majordomo. These lists have been very dependable
so far…
I suspect that the German team will organize itself a mailing list located in Germany, and so forth for other countries. But before they organize for true, it could surely be useful to offer mailing lists located at the FSF to each national team. So yes, please explain me how I should proceed to create and handle them.
We should create temporary mailing lists, one per country, to help people organize. Temporary, because once regrouped and structured, it would be fair the volunteers from country bring back their list in there and manage it as they want. My feeling is that, in the long run, each team should run its own list, from within their country. There also should be some central list to which all teams could subscribe as they see fit, as long as each team is represented in it.
Next: Translating plural forms, Previous: Organization, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
NOTE: This documentation section is outdated and needs to be revised.
There will surely be some discussion about this messages after the packages are finally released. If people now send you some proposals for better messages, how do you proceed? Jim, please note that right now, as I put forward nearly a dozen of localizable programs, I receive both the translations and the coordination concerns about them.
If I put one of my things to pretest, Ulrich receives the announcement and passes it on to the German team, who make last minute revisions. Then he submits the translation files to me as the maintainer. For free packages I do not maintain, I would not even hear about it. This scheme could be made to work for the whole Translation Project, I think. For security reasons, maybe Ulrich (national coordinators, in fact) should update central registry kept at the Translation Project (Jim, me, or Len’s recruits) once in a while.
In December/January, I was aggressively ready to internationalize all of GNU, giving myself the duty of one small GNU package per week or so, taking many weeks or months for bigger packages. But it does not work this way. I first did all the things I’m responsible for. I’ve nothing against some missionary work on other maintainers, but I’m also losing a lot of energy over it—same debates over again.
And when the first localized packages are released we’ll get a lot of responses about ugly translations :-). Surely, and we need to have beforehand a fairly good idea about how to handle the information flow between the national teams and the package maintainers.
Please start saving somewhere a quick history of each PO file. I know for sure that the file format will change, allowing for comments. It would be nice that each file has a kind of log, and references for those who want to submit comments or gripes, or otherwise contribute. I sent a proposal for a fast and flexible format, but it is not receiving acceptance yet by the GNU deciders. I’ll tell you when I have more information about this.
Next: Prioritizing messages: How to determine which messages to translate first, Previous: Information Flow, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
Suppose you are translating a PO file, and it contains an entry like this:
#, c-format msgid "One file removed" msgid_plural "%d files removed" msgstr[0] "" msgstr[1] ""
What does this mean? How do you fill it in?
Such an entry denotes a message with plural forms, that is, a message where
the text depends on a cardinal number. The general form of the message,
in English, is the msgid_plural line. The msgid line is the
English singular form, that is, the form for when the number is equal to 1.
More details about plural forms are explained in Additional functions for plural forms.
The first thing you need to look at is the Plural-Forms line in the
header entry of the PO file. It contains the number of plural forms and a
formula. If the PO file does not yet have such a line, you have to add it.
It only depends on the language into which you are translating. You can
get this info by using the msginit command (see Creating a New PO File) –
it contains a database of known plural formulas – or by asking other
members of your translation team.
Suppose the line looks as follows:
"Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; plural=n%10==1 && n%100!=11 ? 0 : n%10>=2 && n" "%10<=4 && (n%100<10 || n%100>=20) ? 1 : 2;\n"
It’s logically one line; recall that the PO file formatting is allowed to break long lines so that each physical line fits in 80 monospaced columns.
The value of nplurals here tells you that there are three plural
forms. The first thing you need to do is to ensure that the entry contains
an msgstr line for each of the forms:
#, c-format msgid "One file removed" msgid_plural "%d files removed" msgstr[0] "" msgstr[1] "" msgstr[2] ""
Then translate the msgid_plural line and fill it in into each
msgstr line:
#, c-format msgid "One file removed" msgid_plural "%d files removed" msgstr[0] "%d slika uklonjenih" msgstr[1] "%d slika uklonjenih" msgstr[2] "%d slika uklonjenih"
Now you can refine the translation so that it matches the plural form.
According to the formula above, msgstr[0] is used when the number
ends in 1 but does not end in 11; msgstr[1] is used when the number
ends in 2, 3, 4, but not in 12, 13, 14; and msgstr[2] is used in
all other cases. With this knowledge, you can refine the translations:
#, c-format msgid "One file removed" msgid_plural "%d files removed" msgstr[0] "%d slika je uklonjena" msgstr[1] "%d datoteke uklonjenih" msgstr[2] "%d slika uklonjenih"
You noticed that in the English singular form (msgid) the number
placeholder could be omitted and replaced by the numeral word “one”.
Can you do this in your translation as well?
msgstr[0] "jednom datotekom je uklonjen"
Well, it depends on whether msgstr[0] applies only to the number 1,
or to other numbers as well. If, according to the plural formula,
msgstr[0] applies only to n == 1, then you can use the
specialized translation without the number placeholder. In our case,
however, msgstr[0] also applies to the numbers 21, 31, 41, etc.,
and therefore you cannot omit the placeholder.
Previous: Translating plural forms, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
A translator sometimes has only a limited amount of time per week to spend on a package, and some packages have quite large message catalogs (over 1000 messages). Therefore she wishes to translate the messages first that are the most visible to the user, or that occur most frequently. This section describes how to determine these "most urgent" messages. It also applies to determine the "next most urgent" messages after the message catalog has already been partially translated.
In a first step, she uses the programs like a user would do. While she
does this, the GNU gettext library logs into a file the not yet
translated messages for which a translation was requested from the program.
In a second step, she uses the PO mode to translate precisely this set of messages.
Here are more details. The GNU libintl library (but not the
corresponding functions in GNU libc) supports an environment variable
GETTEXT_LOG_UNTRANSLATED. The GNU libintl library will
log into this file the messages for which gettext() and related
functions couldn’t find the translation. If the file doesn’t exist, it
will be created as needed. On systems with GNU libc a shared library
‘preloadable_libintl.so’ is provided that can be used with the ELF
‘LD_PRELOAD’ mechanism.
So, in the first step, the translator uses these commands on systems with
GNU libc:
$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/local/lib/preloadable_libintl.so $ export LD_PRELOAD $ GETTEXT_LOG_UNTRANSLATED=$HOME/gettextlogused $ export GETTEXT_LOG_UNTRANSLATED
and these commands on other systems:
$ GETTEXT_LOG_UNTRANSLATED=$HOME/gettextlogused $ export GETTEXT_LOG_UNTRANSLATED
Then she uses and peruses the programs. (It is a good and recommended practice to use the programs for which you provide translations: it gives you the needed context.) When done, she removes the environment variables:
$ unset LD_PRELOAD $ unset GETTEXT_LOG_UNTRANSLATED
The second step starts with removing duplicates:
$ msguniq $HOME/gettextlogused > missing.po
The result is a PO file, but needs some preprocessing before a PO file editor can be used with it. First, it is a multi-domain PO file, containing messages from many translation domains. Second, it lacks all translator comments and source references. Here is how to get a list of the affected translation domains:
$ sed -n -e 's,^domain "\(.*\)"$,\1,p' < missing.po | sort | uniq
Then the translator can handle the domains one by one. For simplicity, let’s use environment variables to denote the language, domain and source package.
$ lang=nl # your language $ domain=coreutils # the name of the domain to be handled $ package=/usr/src/gnu/coreutils-4.5.4 # the package where it comes from
She takes the latest copy of $lang.po from the Translation Project, or from the package (in most cases, $package/po/$lang.po), or creates a fresh one if she’s the first translator (see Creating a New PO File). She then uses the following commands to mark the not urgent messages as "obsolete". (This doesn’t mean that these messages - translated and untranslated ones - will go away. It simply means that the PO file editor will ignore them in the following editing session.)
$ msggrep --domain=$domain missing.po | grep -v '^domain' \ > $domain-missing.po $ msgattrib --set-obsolete --ignore-file $domain-missing.po $domain.$lang.po \ > $domain.$lang-urgent.po
The she translates $domain.$lang-urgent.po by use of a PO file editor
(see Editing PO Files).
(FIXME: I don’t know whether KBabel and gtranslator also
preserve obsolete messages, as they should.)
Finally she restores the not urgent messages (with their earlier
translations, for those which were already translated) through this command:
$ msgmerge --no-fuzzy-matching $domain.$lang-urgent.po $package/po/$domain.pot \ > $domain.$lang.po
Then she can submit $domain.$lang.po and proceed to the next domain.
Next: The Installer’s and Distributor’s View, Previous: The Translator’s View, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
The maintainer of a package has many responsibilities. One of them is ensuring that the package will install easily on many platforms, and that the magic we described earlier (see The User’s View) will work for installers and end users.
Of course, there are many possible ways by which GNU gettext
might be integrated in a distribution, and this chapter does not cover
them in all generality. Instead, it details one possible approach which
is especially adequate for many free software distributions following GNU
standards, or even better, Gnits standards, because GNU gettext
is purposely for helping the internationalization of the whole GNU
project, and as many other good free packages as possible. So, the
maintainer’s view presented here presumes that the package already has
a configure.ac file and uses GNU Autoconf.
Nevertheless, GNU gettext may surely be useful for free packages
not following GNU standards and conventions, but the maintainers of such
packages might have to show imagination and initiative in organizing
their distributions so gettext work for them in all situations.
There are surely many, out there.
Even if gettext methods are now stabilizing, slight adjustments
might be needed between successive gettext versions, so you
should ideally revise this chapter in subsequent releases, looking
for changes.
gettextize ProgramNext: Prerequisite Works, Up: The Maintainer’s View [Contents][Index]
Some free software packages are distributed as tar files which unpack
in a single directory, these are said to be flat distributions.
Other free software packages have a one level hierarchy of subdirectories, using
for example a subdirectory named doc/ for the Texinfo manual and
man pages, another called lib/ for holding functions meant to
replace or complement C libraries, and a subdirectory src/ for
holding the proper sources for the package. These other distributions
are said to be non-flat.
We cannot say much about flat distributions. A flat
directory structure has the disadvantage of increasing the difficulty
of updating to a new version of GNU gettext. Also, if you have
many PO files, this could somewhat pollute your single directory.
Also, GNU gettext’s libintl sources consist of C sources, shell
scripts, sed scripts and complicated Makefile rules, which don’t
fit well into an existing flat structure. For these reasons, we
recommend to use non-flat approach in this case as well.
Maybe because GNU gettext itself has a non-flat structure,
we have more experience with this approach, and this is what will be
described in the remaining of this chapter. Some maintainers might
use this as an opportunity to unflatten their package structure.
Next: Invoking the gettextize Program, Previous: Flat or Non-Flat Directory Structures, Up: The Maintainer’s View [Contents][Index]
There are some works which are required for using GNU gettext
in one of your package. These works have some kind of generality
that escape the point by point descriptions used in the remainder
of this chapter. So, we describe them here.
gettextize you should install some
other packages first.
Ensure that recent versions of GNU m4, GNU Autoconf and GNU
gettext are already installed at your site, and if not, proceed
to do this first. If you get to install these things, beware that
GNU m4 must be fully installed before GNU Autoconf is even
configured.
To further ease the task of a package maintainer the automake
package was designed and implemented. GNU gettext now uses this
tool and the Makefile in the po/ directory therefore
knows about all the goals necessary for using automake.
Those four packages are only needed by you, as a maintainer; the
installers of your own package and end users do not really need any of
GNU m4, GNU Autoconf, GNU gettext, or GNU automake
for successfully installing and running your package, with messages
properly translated. But this is not completely true if you provide
internationalized shell scripts within your own package: GNU
gettext shall then be installed at the user site if the end users
want to see the translation of shell script messages.
It is worth adding here a few words about how the maintainer should ideally behave with PO files submissions. As a maintainer, your role is to authenticate the origin of the submission as being the representative of the appropriate translating teams of the Translation Project (forward the submission to coordinator@translationproject.org in case of doubt), to ensure that the PO file format is not severely broken and does not prevent successful installation, and for the rest, to merely put these PO files in po/ for distribution.
As a maintainer, you do not have to take on your shoulders the responsibility of checking if the translations are adequate or complete, and should avoid diving into linguistic matters. Translation teams drive themselves and are fully responsible of their linguistic choices for the Translation Project. Keep in mind that translator teams are not driven by maintainers. You can help by carefully redirecting all communications and reports from users about linguistic matters to the appropriate translation team, or explain users how to reach or join their team.
Maintainers should never ever apply PO file bug reports themselves, short-cutting translation teams. If some translator has difficulty to get some of her points through her team, it should not be an option for her to directly negotiate translations with maintainers. Teams ought to settle their problems themselves, if any. If you, as a maintainer, ever think there is a real problem with a team, please never try to solve a team’s problem on your own.
Next: Files You Must Create or Alter, Previous: Prerequisite Works, Up: The Maintainer’s View [Contents][Index]
gettextize ProgramThe gettextize program is an interactive tool that helps the
maintainer of a package internationalized through GNU gettext.
It is used for two purposes:
gettext for
the first time.
gettext support in
a package from a previous to a newer version of GNU gettext.
This program performs the following tasks:
gettext.
gettext versions to the form recommended for the current GNU
gettext version.
gettextize.
It can be invoked as follows:
gettextize [ option… ] [ directory ]
and accepts the following options:
Force replacement of files which already exist.
Specify a directory containing PO files. Such a directory contains the translations into various languages of a particular POT file. This option can be specified multiple times, once for each translation domain. If it is not specified, the directory named po/ is updated.
Don’t update or create ChangeLog files. By default, gettextize
logs all changes (file additions, modifications and removals) in a
file called ‘ChangeLog’ in each affected directory.
Make symbolic links instead of copying the needed files. This can be
useful to save a few kilobytes of disk space, but it requires extra
effort to create self-contained tarballs, it may disturb some mechanism
the maintainer applies to the sources, and it is likely to introduce
bugs when a newer version of gettext is installed on the system.
Print modifications but don’t perform them. All actions that
gettextize would normally execute are inhibited and instead only
listed on standard output.
Display this help and exit.
Output version information and exit.
If directory is given, this is the top level directory of a
package to prepare for using GNU gettext. If not given, it
is assumed that the current directory is the top level directory of
such a package.
The program gettextize provides the following files. However,
no existing file will be replaced unless the option --force
(-f) is specified.
gettext distribution
(beware the double ‘.in’ in the file name) and a few auxiliary
files. If the po/ directory already exists, it will be preserved
along with the files it contains, and only Makefile.in.in and
the auxiliary files will be overwritten.
If ‘--po-dir’ has been specified, this holds for every directory specified through ‘--po-dir’, instead of po/.
AM_GNU_GETTEXT
autoconf macro.
automake:
A set of autoconf macro files is copied into the package’s
autoconf macro repository, usually in a directory called m4/.
If your site support symbolic links, gettextize will not
actually copy the files into your package, but establish symbolic
links instead. This avoids duplicating the disk space needed in
all packages. Merely using the ‘-h’ option while creating the
tar archive of your distribution will resolve each link by an
actual copy in the distribution archive. So, to insist, you really
should use ‘-h’ option with tar within your dist
goal of your main Makefile.in.
Furthermore, gettextize will update all Makefile.am files
in each affected directory, as well as the top level configure.ac
or configure.in file.
It is interesting to understand that most new files for supporting
GNU gettext facilities in one package go in po/ and
m4/ subdirectories. Still, these directories will mostly
contain package dependent files.
The gettextize program makes backup files for all files it
replaces or changes, and also write ChangeLog entries about these
changes. This way, the careful maintainer can check after running
gettextize whether its changes are acceptable to him, and
possibly adjust them. An exception to this rule is the intl/
directory, which is removed as a whole if it still existed.
It is important to understand that gettextize can not do the
entire job of adapting a package for using GNU gettext. The
amount of remaining work depends on whether the package uses GNU
automake or not. But in any case, the maintainer should still
read the section Files You Must Create or Alter after invoking gettextize.
In particular, if after using ‘gettexize’, you get an error ‘AC_COMPILE_IFELSE was called before AC_GNU_SOURCE’ or ‘AC_RUN_IFELSE was called before AC_GNU_SOURCE’, you can fix it by modifying configure.ac, as described in configure.ac at top level.
It is also important to understand that gettextize is not part
of the GNU build system, in the sense that it should not be invoked
automatically, and not be invoked by someone who doesn’t assume the
responsibilities of a package maintainer. For the latter purpose, a
separate tool is provided, see Invoking the autopoint Program.
Next: Autoconf macros for use in configure.ac, Previous: Invoking the gettextize Program, Up: The Maintainer’s View [Contents][Index]
Besides files which are automatically added through gettextize,
there are many files needing revision for properly interacting with
GNU gettext. If you are closely following GNU standards for
Makefile engineering and auto-configuration, the adaptations should
be easier to achieve. Here is a point by point description of the
changes needed in each.
So, here comes a list of files, each one followed by a description of
all alterations it needs. Many examples are taken out from the GNU
gettext 0.22 distribution itself, or from the GNU
hello distribution (https://www.gnu.org/software/hello).
You may indeed refer to the source code of the GNU gettext and
GNU hello packages, as they are intended to be good examples for
using GNU gettext functionality.
Next: LINGUAS in po/, Up: Files You Must Create or Alter [Contents][Index]
The po/ directory should receive a file named POTFILES.in. This file tells which files, among all program sources, have marked strings needing translation. Here is an example of such a file:
# List of source files containing translatable strings. # Copyright (C) 1995 Free Software Foundation, Inc. # Common library files lib/error.c lib/getopt.c lib/xmalloc.c # Package source files src/gettext.c src/msgfmt.c src/xgettext.c
Hash-marked comments and white lines are ignored. All other lines list those source files containing strings marked for translation (see How Marks Appear in Sources), in a notation relative to the top level of your whole distribution, rather than the location of the POTFILES.in file itself.
When a C file is automatically generated by a tool, like flex or
bison, that doesn’t introduce translatable strings by itself,
it is recommended to list in po/POTFILES.in the real source file
(ending in .l in the case of flex, or in .y in the
case of bison), not the generated C file.
Next: Makevars in po/, Previous: POTFILES.in in po/, Up: Files You Must Create or Alter [Contents][Index]
The po/ directory should also receive a file named LINGUAS. This file contains the list of available translations. It is a whitespace separated list. Hash-marked comments and white lines are ignored. Here is an example file:
# Set of available languages. de fr
This example means that German and French PO files are available, so
that these languages are currently supported by your package. If you
want to further restrict, at installation time, the set of installed
languages, this should not be done by modifying the LINGUAS file,
but rather by using the LINGUAS environment variable
(see The Installer’s and Distributor’s View).
It is recommended that you add the "languages" ‘en@quot’ and
‘en@boldquot’ to the LINGUAS file. en@quot is a
variant of English message catalogs (en) which uses real quotation
marks instead of the ugly looking asymmetric ASCII substitutes ‘`’
and ‘'’. en@boldquot is a variant of en@quot that
additionally outputs quoted pieces of text in a bold font, when used in
a terminal emulator which supports the VT100 escape sequences (such as
xterm or the Linux console, but not Emacs in M-x shell mode).
These extra message catalogs ‘en@quot’ and ‘en@boldquot’
are constructed automatically, not by translators; to support them, you
need the files Rules-quot, quot.sed, boldquot.sed,
en@quot.header, en@boldquot.header, insert-header.sin
in the po/ directory. You can copy them from GNU gettext’s po/
directory; they are also installed by running gettextize.
Next: Extending Makefile in po/, Previous: LINGUAS in po/, Up: Files You Must Create or Alter [Contents][Index]
The po/ directory also has a file named Makevars. It contains variables that are specific to your project. po/Makevars gets inserted into the po/Makefile when the latter is created. The variables thus take effect when the POT file is created or updated, and when the message catalogs get installed.
The first three variables can be left unmodified if your package has a single message domain and, accordingly, a single po/ directory. Only packages which have multiple po/ directories at different locations need to adjust the three first variables defined in Makevars.
As an alternative to the XGETTEXT_OPTIONS variable, it is also
possible to specify xgettext options through the
AM_XGETTEXT_OPTION autoconf macro. See AM_XGETTEXT_OPTION in po.m4.
Next: configure.ac at top level, Previous: Makevars in po/, Up: Files You Must Create or Alter [Contents][Index]
All files called Rules-* in the po/ directory get appended to the po/Makefile when it is created. They present an opportunity to add rules for special PO files to the Makefile, without needing to mess with po/Makefile.in.in.
GNU gettext comes with a Rules-quot file, containing rules for
building catalogs en@quot.po and en@boldquot.po. The
effect of en@quot.po is that people who set their LANGUAGE
environment variable to ‘en@quot’ will get messages with proper
looking symmetric Unicode quotation marks instead of abusing the ASCII
grave accent and the ASCII apostrophe for indicating quotations. To
enable this catalog, simply add en@quot to the po/LINGUAS
file. The effect of en@boldquot.po is that people who set
LANGUAGE to ‘en@boldquot’ will get not only proper quotation
marks, but also the quoted text will be shown in a bold font on terminals
and consoles. This catalog is useful only for command-line programs, not
GUI programs. To enable it, similarly add en@boldquot to the
po/LINGUAS file.
Similarly, you can create rules for building message catalogs for the
sr@latin locale – Serbian written with the Latin alphabet –
from those for the sr locale – Serbian written with Cyrillic
letters. See Invoking the msgfilter Program.
Next: config.guess, config.sub at top level, Previous: Extending Makefile in po/, Up: Files You Must Create or Alter [Contents][Index]
configure.ac or configure.in - this is the source from which
autoconf generates the configure script.
This is done by a set of lines like these:
PACKAGE=gettext VERSION=0.22 AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED(PACKAGE, "$PACKAGE") AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED(VERSION, "$VERSION") AC_SUBST(PACKAGE) AC_SUBST(VERSION)
or, if you are using GNU automake, by a line like this:
AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE(gettext, 0.22)
Of course, you replace ‘gettext’ with the name of your package,
and ‘0.22’ by its version numbers, exactly as they
should appear in the packaged tar file name of your distribution
(gettext-0.22.tar.gz, here).
Here is the main m4 macro for triggering internationalization
support. Just add this line to configure.ac:
AM_GNU_GETTEXT([external])
This call is purposely simple, even if it generates a lot of configure time checking and actions.
The AC_OUTPUT directive, at the end of your configure.ac
file, needs to be modified in two ways:
AC_OUTPUT([existing configuration files po/Makefile.in], [existing additional actions])
The modification to the first argument to AC_OUTPUT asks
for substitution in the po/ directory.
Note the ‘.in’ suffix used for po/ only. This is because
the distributed file is really po/Makefile.in.in.
Next: mkinstalldirs at top level, Previous: configure.ac at top level, Up: Files You Must Create or Alter [Contents][Index]
You need to add the GNU config.guess and config.sub files
to your distribution. They are needed because the AM_ICONV macro
contains knowledge about specific platforms and therefore needs to
identify the platform.
You can obtain the newest version of config.guess and config.sub from the ‘config’ project at https://savannah.gnu.org/. The commands to fetch them are
$ wget -O config.guess 'https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=config.git;a=blob_plain;f=config.guess;hb=HEAD' $ wget -O config.sub 'https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=config.git;a=blob_plain;f=config.sub;hb=HEAD'
Less recent versions are also contained in the GNU automake and
GNU libtool packages.
Normally, config.guess and config.sub are put at the top level of a distribution. But it is also possible to put them in a subdirectory, altogether with other configuration support files like install-sh, ltconfig, ltmain.sh or missing. All you need to do, other than moving the files, is to add the following line to your configure.ac.
AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR([subdir])
Next: aclocal.m4 at top level, Previous: config.guess, config.sub at top level, Up: Files You Must Create or Alter [Contents][Index]
With earlier versions of GNU gettext, you needed to add the GNU mkinstalldirs script to your distribution. This is not needed any more. You can remove it.
Next: config.h.in at top level, Previous: mkinstalldirs at top level, Up: Files You Must Create or Alter [Contents][Index]
If you do not have an aclocal.m4 file in your distribution,
the simplest is to concatenate the files build-to-host.m4,
gettext.m4, host-cpu-c-abi.m4, intlmacosx.m4,
iconv.m4, lib-ld.m4, lib-link.m4, lib-prefix.m4,
nls.m4, po.m4, progtest.m4 from GNU gettext’s
m4/ directory into a single file.
If you already have an aclocal.m4 file, then you will have
to merge the said macro files into your aclocal.m4. Note that if
you are upgrading from a previous release of GNU gettext, you
should most probably replace the macros (AM_GNU_GETTEXT,
etc.), as they usually
change a little from one release of GNU gettext to the next.
Their contents may vary as we get more experience with strange systems
out there.
You should be using GNU automake 1.9 or newer. With it, you need
to copy the files build-to-host.m4, gettext.m4,
host-cpu-c-abi.m4, intlmacosx.m4, iconv.m4,
lib-ld.m4, lib-link.m4, lib-prefix.m4, nls.m4,
po.m4, progtest.m4 from GNU gettext’s m4/
directory to a subdirectory named m4/ and add the line
ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS = -I m4
to your top level Makefile.am.
If you are using GNU automake 1.10 or newer, it is even easier:
Add the line
ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS = --install -I m4
to your top level Makefile.am, and run ‘aclocal --install -I m4’. This will copy the needed files to the m4/ subdirectory automatically, before updating aclocal.m4.
These macros check for the internationalization support functions
and related informations. Hopefully, once stabilized, these macros
might be integrated in the standard Autoconf set, because this
piece of m4 code will be the same for all projects using GNU
gettext.
Next: Makefile.in at top level, Previous: aclocal.m4 at top level, Up: Files You Must Create or Alter [Contents][Index]
The include file template that holds the C macros to be defined by
configure is usually called config.h.in and may be
maintained either manually or automatically.
If it is maintained automatically, by use of the ‘autoheader’
program, you need to do nothing about it. This is the case in particular
if you are using GNU automake.
If it is maintained manually, you can get away by adding the following lines to config.h.in:
/* Define to 1 if translation of program messages to the user's native language is requested. */ #undef ENABLE_NLS
Next: Makefile.in in src/, Previous: config.h.in at top level, Up: Files You Must Create or Alter [Contents][Index]
Here are a few modifications you need to make to your main, top-level Makefile.in file.
PACKAGE = @PACKAGE@ VERSION = @VERSION@
If you are using Makefiles, either generated by automake, or hand-written so they carefully follow the GNU coding standards, the effected goals for which the new subdirectories must be handled include ‘installdirs’, ‘install’, ‘uninstall’, ‘clean’, ‘distclean’.
Here is an example of a canonical order of processing. In this
example, we also define SUBDIRS in Makefile.in for it
to be further used in the ‘dist:’ goal.
SUBDIRS = doc lib src po
distdir = $(PACKAGE)-$(VERSION) dist: Makefile rm -fr $(distdir) mkdir $(distdir) chmod 777 $(distdir) for file in $(DISTFILES); do \ ln $$file $(distdir) 2>/dev/null || cp -p $$file $(distdir); \ done for subdir in $(SUBDIRS); do \ mkdir $(distdir)/$$subdir || exit 1; \ chmod 777 $(distdir)/$$subdir; \ (cd $$subdir && $(MAKE) $@) || exit 1; \ done tar chozf $(distdir).tar.gz $(distdir) rm -fr $(distdir)
Note that if you are using GNU automake, Makefile.in is
automatically generated from Makefile.am, and all needed changes
to Makefile.am are already made by running ‘gettextize’.
Next: gettext.h in lib/, Previous: Makefile.in at top level, Up: Files You Must Create or Alter [Contents][Index]
Some of the modifications made in the main Makefile.in will also be needed in the Makefile.in from your package sources, which we assume here to be in the src/ subdirectory. Here are all the modifications needed in src/Makefile.in:
PACKAGE = @PACKAGE@ VERSION = @VERSION@
top_srcdir
gets defined. This will serve for cpp include files. Just add
the line:
top_srcdir = @top_srcdir@
subdir as ‘src’, later
allowing for almost uniform ‘dist:’ goals in all your
Makefile.in. At list, the ‘dist:’ goal below assume that
you used:
subdir = src
main function of your program will normally call
bindtextdomain (see see Triggering gettext Operations), like this:
bindtextdomain (PACKAGE, LOCALEDIR); textdomain (PACKAGE);
On native Windows platforms, the main function may call
wbindtextdomain instead of bindtextdomain.
To make LOCALEDIR known to the program, add the following lines to Makefile.in:
datadir = @datadir@ datarootdir= @datarootdir@ localedir = @localedir@ DEFS = -DLOCALEDIR=$(localedir_c_make) @DEFS@
$(localedir_c_make) expands to the value of localedir, in
C syntax, escaped for use in a Makefile.
Note that @datadir@ defaults to ‘$(prefix)/share’, and
$(localedir) defaults to ‘$(prefix)/share/locale’.
@LIBINTL@ or
@LTLIBINTL@ as a library. @LIBINTL@ is for use without
libtool, @LTLIBINTL@ is for use with libtool. An
easy way to achieve this is to manage that it gets into LIBS, like
this:
LIBS = @LIBINTL@ @LIBS@
In most packages internationalized with GNU gettext, one will
find a directory lib/ in which a library containing some helper
functions will be build. (You need at least the few functions which the
GNU gettext Library itself needs.) However some of the functions
in the lib/ also give messages to the user which of course should be
translated, too. Taking care of this, the support library (say
libsupport.a) should be placed before @LIBINTL@ and
@LIBS@ in the above example. So one has to write this:
LIBS = ../lib/libsupport.a @LIBINTL@ @LIBS@
distdir = ../$(PACKAGE)-$(VERSION)/$(subdir) dist: Makefile $(DISTFILES) for file in $(DISTFILES); do \ ln $$file $(distdir) 2>/dev/null || cp -p $$file $(distdir) || exit 1; \ done
Note that if you are using GNU automake, Makefile.in is
automatically generated from Makefile.am, and the first three
changes and the last change are not necessary. The remaining needed
Makefile.am modifications are the following:
<module>_CPPFLAGS = -DLOCALEDIR=$(localedir_c_make)
for each specific module or compilation unit, or
AM_CPPFLAGS = -DLOCALEDIR=$(localedir_c_make)
for all modules and compilation units together.
@LIBINTL@ or
@LTLIBINTL@ as a library, add the following to
Makefile.am:
<program>_LDADD = @LIBINTL@
for each specific program, or
LDADD = @LIBINTL@
for all programs together. Remember that when you use libtool
to link a program, you need to use @LTLIBINTL@ instead of @LIBINTL@
for that program.
Previous: Makefile.in in src/, Up: Files You Must Create or Alter [Contents][Index]
Internationalization of packages, as provided by GNU gettext, is
optional. It can be turned off in two situations:
A C preprocessor macro can be used to detect these two cases. Usually,
when libintl.h was found and not explicitly disabled, the
ENABLE_NLS macro will be defined to 1 in the autoconf generated
configuration file (usually called config.h). In the two negative
situations, however, this macro will not be defined, thus it will evaluate
to 0 in C preprocessor expressions.
gettext.h is a convenience header file for conditional use of
<libintl.h>, depending on the ENABLE_NLS macro. If
ENABLE_NLS is set, it includes <libintl.h>; otherwise it
defines no-op substitutes for the libintl.h functions. We recommend
the use of "gettext.h" over direct use of <libintl.h>,
so that portability to older systems is guaranteed and installers can
turn off internationalization if they want to. In the C code, you will
then write
#include "gettext.h"
instead of
#include <libintl.h>
The location of gettext.h is usually in a directory containing
auxiliary include files. In many GNU packages, there is a directory
lib/ containing helper functions; gettext.h fits there.
In other packages, it can go into the src directory.
Do not install the gettext.h file in public locations. Every
package that needs it should contain a copy of it on its own.
Next: Integrating with Version Control Systems, Previous: Files You Must Create or Alter, Up: The Maintainer’s View [Contents][Index]
GNU gettext installs macros for use in a package’s
configure.ac or configure.in.
See Introduction in The Autoconf Manual.
The primary macro is, of course, AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
Next: AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION in gettext.m4, Up: Autoconf macros for use in configure.ac [Contents][Index]
The AM_GNU_GETTEXT macro tests for the presence of the GNU gettext
function family in either the C library or a separate libintl
library (shared or static libraries are both supported). It also invokes
AM_PO_SUBDIRS, thus preparing the po/ directories of the
package for building.
AM_GNU_GETTEXT accepts up to two optional arguments. The general
syntax is
AM_GNU_GETTEXT([intlsymbol], [needsymbol])
intlsymbol should always be ‘external’.
If needsymbol is specified and is ‘need-ngettext’, then GNU
gettext implementations (in libc or libintl) without the ngettext()
function will be ignored. If needsymbol is specified and is
‘need-formatstring-macros’, then GNU gettext implementations that don’t
support the ISO C 99 <inttypes.h> formatstring macros will be ignored.
Only one needsymbol can be specified. These requirements can also be
specified by using the macro AM_GNU_GETTEXT_NEED elsewhere. To specify
more than one requirement, just specify the strongest one among them, or
invoke the AM_GNU_GETTEXT_NEED macro several times. The hierarchy
among the various alternatives is as follows: ‘need-formatstring-macros’
implies ‘need-ngettext’.
The AM_GNU_GETTEXT macro determines whether GNU gettext is
available and should be used. If so, it sets the USE_NLS variable
to ‘yes’; it defines ENABLE_NLS to 1 in the autoconf
generated configuration file (usually called config.h); it sets
the variables LIBINTL and LTLIBINTL to the linker options
for use in a Makefile (LIBINTL for use without libtool,
LTLIBINTL for use with libtool); it adds an ‘-I’ option to
CPPFLAGS if necessary. In the negative case, it sets
USE_NLS to ‘no’; it sets LIBINTL and LTLIBINTL
to empty and doesn’t change CPPFLAGS.
The complexities that AM_GNU_GETTEXT deals with are the following:
gettext in the C library, for example
glibc. Some have it in a separate library libintl. GNU libintl
might have been installed as part of the GNU gettext package.
libintl, if installed, is not necessarily already in the search
path (CPPFLAGS for the include file search path, LDFLAGS for
the library search path).
gettext cannot exploit the GNU mo files, doesn’t have the
necessary locale dependency features, and cannot convert messages from
the catalog’s text encoding to the user’s locale encoding.
libintl, if installed, is not necessarily already in the
run time library search path. To avoid the need for setting an environment
variable like LD_LIBRARY_PATH, the macro adds the appropriate
run time search path options to the LIBINTL and LTLIBINTL
variables. This works on most systems, but not on some operating systems
with limited shared library support, like SCO.
libintl relies on POSIX/XSI iconv. The macro checks for
linker options needed to use iconv and appends them to the LIBINTL
and LTLIBINTL variables.
Additionally, the AM_GNU_GETTEXT macro sets two variables, for
convenience. Both are derived from the --localedir configure
option. They are correct even on native Windows, where directories
frequently contain backslashes.
localedir_cThis is the value of localedir, in C syntax. This variable is
meant to be substituted into C or C++ code through
AC_CONFIG_FILES.
localedir_c_makeThis is the value of localedir, in C syntax, escaped for use in
a Makefile. This variable is meant to be used in Makefiles,
for example for defining a C macro named LOCALEDIR:
AM_CPPFLAGS = ... -DLOCALEDIR=$(localedir_c_make) ...
Next: AM_GNU_GETTEXT_NEED in gettext.m4, Previous: AM_GNU_GETTEXT in gettext.m4, Up: Autoconf macros for use in configure.ac [Contents][Index]
The AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION macro declares the version number of
the GNU gettext infrastructure that is used by the package.
The use of this macro is optional; only the autopoint program makes
use of it (see Integrating with Version Control Systems).
Next: AM_PO_SUBDIRS in po.m4, Previous: AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION in gettext.m4, Up: Autoconf macros for use in configure.ac [Contents][Index]
The AM_GNU_GETTEXT_NEED macro declares a constraint regarding the
GNU gettext implementation. The syntax is
AM_GNU_GETTEXT_NEED([needsymbol])
If needsymbol is ‘need-ngettext’, then GNU gettext implementations
(in libc or libintl) without the ngettext() function will be ignored.
If needsymbol is ‘need-formatstring-macros’, then GNU gettext
implementations that don’t support the ISO C 99 <inttypes.h>
formatstring macros will be ignored.
The optional second argument of AM_GNU_GETTEXT is also taken into
account.
The AM_GNU_GETTEXT_NEED invocations can occur before or after
the AM_GNU_GETTEXT invocation; the order doesn’t matter.
Next: AM_XGETTEXT_OPTION in po.m4, Previous: AM_GNU_GETTEXT_NEED in gettext.m4, Up: Autoconf macros for use in configure.ac [Contents][Index]
The AM_PO_SUBDIRS macro prepares the po/ directories of the
package for building. This macro should be used in internationalized
programs written in other programming languages than C, C++, Objective C,
for example sh, Python, Lisp. See Other Programming Languages for a list of programming languages that support localization
through PO files.
The AM_PO_SUBDIRS macro determines whether internationalization
should be used. If so, it sets the USE_NLS variable to ‘yes’,
otherwise to ‘no’. It also determines the right values for Makefile
variables in each po/ directory.
Next: AM_ICONV in iconv.m4, Previous: AM_PO_SUBDIRS in po.m4, Up: Autoconf macros for use in configure.ac [Contents][Index]
The AM_XGETTEXT_OPTION macro registers a command-line option to be
used in the invocations of xgettext in the po/ directories
of the package.
For example, if you have a source file that defines a function ‘error_at_line’ whose fifth argument is a format string, you can use
AM_XGETTEXT_OPTION([--flag=error_at_line:5:c-format])
to instruct xgettext to mark all translatable strings in ‘gettext’
invocations that occur as fifth argument to this function as ‘c-format’.
See Invoking the xgettext Program for the list of options that xgettext
accepts.
The use of this macro is an alternative to the use of the ‘XGETTEXT_OPTIONS’ variable in po/Makevars.
Previous: AM_XGETTEXT_OPTION in po.m4, Up: Autoconf macros for use in configure.ac [Contents][Index]
The AM_ICONV macro tests for the presence of the POSIX/XSI
iconv function family in either the C library or a separate
libiconv library. If found, it sets the am_cv_func_iconv
variable to ‘yes’; it defines HAVE_ICONV to 1 in the autoconf
generated configuration file (usually called config.h); it defines
ICONV_CONST to ‘const’ or to empty, depending on whether the
second argument of iconv() is of type ‘const char **’ or
‘char **’; it sets the variables LIBICONV and
LTLIBICONV to the linker options for use in a Makefile
(LIBICONV for use without libtool, LTLIBICONV for use with
libtool); it adds an ‘-I’ option to CPPFLAGS if
necessary. If not found, it sets LIBICONV and LTLIBICONV to
empty and doesn’t change CPPFLAGS.
The complexities that AM_ICONV deals with are the following:
iconv in the C library, for example
glibc. Some have it in a separate library libiconv, for example
OSF/1 or FreeBSD. Regardless of the operating system, GNU libiconv
might have been installed. In that case, it should be used instead of the
operating system’s native iconv.
libiconv, if installed, is not necessarily already in the search
path (CPPFLAGS for the include file search path, LDFLAGS for
the library search path).
libiconv is binary incompatible with some operating system’s
native iconv, for example on FreeBSD. Use of an iconv.h
and libiconv.so that don’t fit together would produce program
crashes.
libiconv, if installed, is not necessarily already in the
run time library search path. To avoid the need for setting an environment
variable like LD_LIBRARY_PATH, the macro adds the appropriate
run time search path options to the LIBICONV variable. This works
on most systems, but not on some operating systems with limited shared
library support, like SCO.
iconv.m4 is distributed with the GNU gettext package because gettext.m4 relies on it.
Next: Creating a Distribution Tarball, Previous: Autoconf macros for use in configure.ac, Up: The Maintainer’s View [Contents][Index]
Many projects use version control systems for distributed development
and source backup. This section gives some advice how to manage the
uses of gettextize, autopoint and autoconf on
version controlled files.
autopoint ProgramNext: Files to put under version control, Up: Integrating with Version Control Systems [Contents][Index]
In a project development with multiple developers, there should be a
single developer who occasionally - when there is desire to upgrade to
a new gettext version - runs gettextize and performs the
changes listed in Files You Must Create or Alter, and then commits his changes
to the repository.
It is highly recommended that all developers on a project use the same
version of GNU gettext in the package. In other words, if a
developer runs gettextize, he should go the whole way, make the
necessary remaining changes and commit his changes to the repository.
Otherwise the following damages will likely occur:
gettext
specific portions in configure.ac, configure.in and
Makefile.am, Makefile.in files depend on the gettext
version, the use of infrastructure files belonging to different
gettext versions can easily lead to build errors.
gettext than the other developers, the distribution will
be less well tested than if all had been using the same gettext
version. For example, it is possible that a platform specific bug goes
undiscovered due to this constellation.
Next: Put PO Files under Version Control, Previous: Avoiding version mismatch in distributed development, Up: Integrating with Version Control Systems [Contents][Index]
There are basically three ways to deal with generated files in the
context of a version controlled repository, such as configure
generated from configure.ac, parser.c generated
from parser.y, or po/Makefile.in.in autoinstalled
by gettextize or autopoint.
Each of these three approaches has different advantages and drawbacks.
automake, GNU
autoconf, GNU m4 installed in his PATH; sometimes he
even needs particular versions of them. 2b. When a release is made
and a commit is made on the generated files, the other developers get
conflicts on the generated files when merging the local work back to
the repository. Although these conflicts are easy to resolve, they
are annoying.
automake, GNU autoconf, GNU m4 installed in his
PATH, but also that he needs to perform a package specific pre-build
step before being able to "./configure; make".
For the first and second approach, all files modified or brought in
by the occasional gettextize invocation and update should be
committed into the repository.
For the third approach, the maintainer can omit from the repository
all the files that gettextize mentions as "copy". Instead, he
adds to the configure.ac or configure.in a line of the
form
AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION(0.22)
and adds to the package’s pre-build script an invocation of
‘autopoint’. For everyone who checks out the source, this
autopoint invocation will copy into the right place the
gettext infrastructure files that have been omitted from the repository.
The version number used as argument to AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION is
the version of the gettext infrastructure that the package wants
to use. It is also the minimum version number of the ‘autopoint’
program. So, if you write AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION(0.11.5) then the
developers can have any version >= 0.11.5 installed; the package will work
with the 0.11.5 infrastructure in all developers’ builds. When the
maintainer then runs gettextize from, say, version 0.12.1 on the package,
the occurrence of AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION(0.11.5) will be changed
into AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION(0.12.1), and all other developers that
use the CVS will henceforth need to have GNU gettext 0.12.1 or newer
installed.
Next: Invoking the autopoint Program, Previous: Files to put under version control, Up: Integrating with Version Control Systems [Contents][Index]
Since translations are valuable assets as well as the source code, it would make sense to put them under version control. The GNU gettext infrastructure supports two ways to deal with translations in the context of a version controlled repository.
If a POT file is absent when building, it will be generated by
scanning the source files with xgettext, and then the PO files
are regenerated as a dependency. On the other hand, some maintainers
want to keep the POT file unchanged during the development phase. So,
even if a POT file is present and older than the source code, it won’t
be updated automatically. You can manually update it with make
$(DOMAIN).pot-update, and commit it at certain point.
Special advices for particular version control systems:
no in the Makevars
file and do make update-po manually.
#: lib/error.c:116 are sometimes
annoying, since these comments are volatile and may introduce unwanted
change to the working copy when building. To mitigate this, you can
decide to omit those comments from the PO files in the repository.
This is possible with the --no-location option of the
msgmerge command 6. The drawback is
that, if the location information is needed, translators have to
recover the location comments by running msgmerge again.
Previous: Put PO Files under Version Control, Up: Integrating with Version Control Systems [Contents][Index]
autopoint Programautopoint [option]...
The autopoint program copies standard gettext infrastructure files
into a source package. It extracts from a macro call of the form
AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION(version), found in the package’s
configure.in or configure.ac file, the gettext version
used by the package, and copies the infrastructure files belonging to
this version into the package.
To extract the latest available infrastructure which satisfies a version
requirement, then you can use the form
AM_GNU_GETTEXT_REQUIRE_VERSION(version) instead. For
example, if gettext 0.22 is installed on your system
and 0.19.1 is requested, then the infrastructure files of version
0.22 will be copied into a source package.
autopoint supports the GNU gettext versions from 0.10.35
to the current one, 0.22. In order to apply
autopoint to a package using a gettext version newer than
0.22, you need to install this same version of GNU
gettext at least.
In packages using GNU automake, an invocation of autopoint
should be followed by invocations of aclocal and then autoconf
and autoheader. The reason is that autopoint installs some
autoconf macro files, which are used by aclocal to create
aclocal.m4, and the latter is used by autoconf to create the
package’s configure script and by autoheader to create the
package’s config.h.in include file template.
The name ‘autopoint’ is an abbreviation of ‘auto-po-intl-m4’; in earlier versions, the tool copied or updated mostly files in the po, intl, m4 directories.
Previous: Integrating with Version Control Systems, Up: The Maintainer’s View [Contents][Index]
In projects that use GNU automake, the usual commands for creating
a distribution tarball, ‘make dist’ or ‘make distcheck’,
automatically update the PO files as needed.
If GNU automake is not used, the maintainer needs to perform this
update before making a release:
$ ./configure $ (cd po; make update-po) $ make distclean
Next: Other Programming Languages, Previous: The Maintainer’s View, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
By default, packages fully using GNU gettext, internally,
are installed in such a way as to allow translation of
messages. At configuration time, those packages should
automatically detect whether the underlying host system already provides
the GNU gettext functions. If not,
the GNU gettext library should be automatically prepared
and used. Installers may use special options at configuration
time for changing this behavior. The command ‘./configure
--with-included-gettext’ bypasses system gettext to
use the included GNU gettext instead,
while ‘./configure --disable-nls’
produces programs totally unable to translate messages.
Internationalized packages have usually many ll.po
files. Unless
translations are disabled, all those available are installed together
with the package. However, the environment variable LINGUAS
may be set, prior to configuration, to limit the installed set.
LINGUAS should then contain a space separated list of two-letter
codes, stating which languages are allowed.
Next: Other Data Formats, Previous: The Installer’s and Distributor’s View, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
While the presentation of gettext focuses mostly on C and
implicitly applies to C++ as well, its scope is far broader than that:
Many programming languages, scripting languages and other textual data
like GUI resources or package descriptions can make use of the gettext
approach.
Next: The Programmer’s View, Up: Other Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
All programming and scripting languages that have the notion of strings
are eligible to supporting gettext. Supporting gettext
means the following:
gettext would do, but a shorthand
syntax helps keeping the legibility of internationalized programs. For
example, in C we use the syntax _("string"), and in GNU awk we use
the shorthand _"string".
gettext function, or performs equivalent
processing.
ngettext,
dcgettext, dcngettext available from within the language.
These functions are less often used, but are nevertheless necessary for
particular purposes: ngettext for correct plural handling, and
dcgettext and dcngettext for obeying other locale-related
environment variables than LC_MESSAGES, such as LC_TIME or
LC_MONETARY. For these latter functions, you need to make the
LC_* constants, available in the C header <locale.h>,
referenceable from within the language, usually either as enumeration
values or as strings.
textdomain function available from within the
language, or by introducing a magic variable called TEXTDOMAIN.
Similarly, you should allow the programmer to designate where to search
for message catalogs, by providing access to the bindtextdomain
function or — on native Windows platforms — to the wbindtextdomain
function.
setlocale (LC_ALL, "") call during
the startup of your language runtime, or allow the programmer to do so.
Remember that gettext will act as a no-op if the LC_MESSAGES and
LC_CTYPE locale categories are not both set.
xgettext program is being
extended to support very different programming languages. Please
contact the GNU gettext maintainers to help them doing this.
The GNU gettext maintainers will need from you a formal
description of the lexical structure of source files. It should
answer the questions:
Based on this description, the GNU gettext maintainers
can add support to xgettext.
If the string extractor is best integrated into your language’s parser,
GNU xgettext can function as a front end to your string extractor.
gettext manual will be extended to
include a pointer to this documentation.
Based on this, the GNU gettext maintainers can add a format string
equivalence checker to msgfmt, so that translators get told
immediately when they have made a mistake during the translation of a
format string.
gettext, but the programs should be portable
across implementations, you should provide a no-i18n emulation, that
makes the other implementations accept programs written for yours,
without actually translating the strings.
gettext maintainers, so they can add support for
your language to po-mode.el.
On the implementation side, two approaches are possible, with different effects on portability and copyright:
gettext functions if they are found in
the C library. For example, an autoconf test for gettext() and
ngettext() will detect this situation. For the moment, this test
will succeed on GNU systems and on Solaris 11 platforms. No severe
copyright restrictions apply, except if you want to distribute statically
linked binaries.
gettext functionality.
This has the advantage of full portability and no copyright
restrictions, but also the drawback that you have to reimplement the GNU
gettext features (such as the LANGUAGE environment
variable, the locale aliases database, the automatic charset conversion,
and plural handling).
Next: The Translator’s View, Previous: The Language Implementor’s View, Up: Other Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
For the programmer, the general procedure is the same as for the C
language. The Emacs PO mode marking supports other languages, and the GNU
xgettext string extractor recognizes other languages based on the
file extension or a command-line option. In some languages,
setlocale is not needed because it is already performed by the
underlying language runtime.
Next: The Maintainer’s View, Previous: The Programmer’s View, Up: Other Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
The translator works exactly as in the C language case. The only difference is that when translating format strings, she has to be aware of the language’s particular syntax for positional arguments in format strings.
Next: Objective C Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
C format strings are described in POSIX (IEEE P1003.1 2001), section XSH 3 fprintf(), http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/functions/fprintf.html. See also the fprintf() manual page, http://www.linuxvalley.it/encyclopedia/ldp/manpage/man3/printf.3.php, http://informatik.fh-wuerzburg.de/student/i510/man/printf.html.
Although format strings with positions that reorder arguments, such as
"Only %2$d bytes free on '%1$s'."
which is semantically equivalent to
"'%s' has only %d bytes free."
are a POSIX/XSI feature and not specified by ISO C 99, translators can rely
on this reordering ability: On the few platforms where printf(),
fprintf() etc. don’t support this feature natively, libintl.a
or libintl.so provides replacement functions, and GNU <libintl.h>
activates these replacement functions automatically.
As a special feature for Farsi (Persian) and maybe Arabic, translators can
insert an ‘I’ flag into numeric format directives. For example, the
translation of "%d" can be "%Id". The effect of this flag,
on systems with GNU libc, is that in the output, the ASCII digits are
replaced with the ‘outdigits’ defined in the LC_CTYPE locale
category. On other systems, the gettext function removes this flag,
so that it has no effect.
Note that the programmer should not put this flag into the untranslated string. (Putting the ‘I’ format directive flag into an msgid string would lead to undefined behaviour on platforms without glibc when NLS is disabled.)
Next: C++ Format Strings, Previous: C Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
Objective C format strings are like C format strings. They support an
additional format directive: "%@", which when executed consumes an argument
of type Object *.
Next: Python Format Strings, Previous: Objective C Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
C++ format strings are described in ISO C++ 20, namely in https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2020/n4861.pdf, section 20.20.2 Format string [format.string].
An easier-to-read description is found at https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/utility/format/format#Parameters and https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/utility/format/formatter#Standard_format_specification.
Next: Java Format Strings, Previous: C++ Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
There are two kinds of format strings in Python: those acceptable to
the Python built-in format operator %, labelled as
‘python-format’, and those acceptable to the format method
of the ‘str’ object.
Python % format strings are described in
Python Library reference /
5. Built-in Types /
5.6. Sequence Types /
5.6.2. String Formatting Operations.
https://docs.python.org/2/library/stdtypes.html#string-formatting-operations.
Python brace format strings are described in PEP 3101 – Advanced String Formatting, https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3101/.
Next: C# Format Strings, Previous: Python Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
There are two kinds of format strings in Java: those acceptable to the
MessageFormat.format function, labelled as ‘java-format’,
and those acceptable to the String.format and
PrintStream.printf functions, labelled as ‘java-printf-format’.
Java format strings are described in the JDK documentation for class
java.text.MessageFormat,
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/text/MessageFormat.html.
See also the ICU documentation
http://icu-project.org/apiref/icu4j/com/ibm/icu/text/MessageFormat.html.
Java printf format strings are described in the JDK documentation
for class java.util.Formatter,
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/Formatter.html.
Next: JavaScript Format Strings, Previous: Java Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
C# format strings are described in the .NET documentation for class
System.String and in
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpguide/html/cpConFormattingOverview.asp.
Next: Scheme Format Strings, Previous: C# Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
Although JavaScript specification itself does not define any format
strings, many JavaScript implementations provide printf-like
functions. xgettext understands a set of common format strings
used in popular JavaScript implementations including Gjs, Seed, and
Node.JS. In such a format string, a directive starts with ‘%’
and is finished by a specifier: ‘%’ denotes a literal percent
sign, ‘c’ denotes a character, ‘s’ denotes a string,
‘b’, ‘d’, ‘o’, ‘x’, ‘X’ denote an integer,
‘f’ denotes floating-point number, ‘j’ denotes a JSON
object.
Next: Lisp Format Strings, Previous: JavaScript Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
Scheme format strings are documented in the SLIB manual, section Format Specification.
Next: Emacs Lisp Format Strings, Previous: Scheme Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
Lisp format strings are described in the Common Lisp HyperSpec, chapter 22.3 Formatted Output, http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/iiip/doc/CommonLISP/HyperSpec/Body/sec_22-3.html.
Next: librep Format Strings, Previous: Lisp Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
Emacs Lisp format strings are documented in the Emacs Lisp reference, section Formatting Strings, https://www.gnu.org/manual/elisp-manual-21-2.8/html_chapter/elisp_4.html#SEC75. Note that as of version 21, XEmacs supports numbered argument specifications in format strings while FSF Emacs doesn’t.
Next: Ruby Format Strings, Previous: Emacs Lisp Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
librep format strings are documented in the librep manual, section Formatted Output, http://librep.sourceforge.net/librep-manual.html#Formatted%20Output, http://www.gwinnup.org/research/docs/librep.html#SEC122.
Next: Shell Format Strings, Previous: librep Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
Ruby format strings are described in the documentation of the Ruby
functions format and sprintf, in
https://ruby-doc.org/core-2.7.1/Kernel.html#method-i-sprintf.
There are two kinds of format strings in Ruby:
%n$ syntax. Note
that if one argument uses this syntax, all must use this syntax.
%<name>. Note that %{name} is
equivalent to %<name>s.
Next: awk Format Strings, Previous: Ruby Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
Shell format strings, as supported by GNU gettext and the ‘envsubst’
program, are strings with references to shell variables in the form
$variable or ${variable}. References of the form
${variable-default},
${variable:-default},
${variable=default},
${variable:=default},
${variable+replacement},
${variable:+replacement},
${variable?ignored},
${variable:?ignored},
that would be valid inside shell scripts, are not supported. The
variable names must consist solely of alphanumeric or underscore
ASCII characters, not start with a digit and be nonempty; otherwise such
a variable reference is ignored.
Next: Lua Format Strings, Previous: Shell Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
awk format strings are described in the gawk documentation, section Printf, https://www.gnu.org/manual/gawk/html_node/Printf.html#Printf.
Next: Object Pascal Format Strings, Previous: awk Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
Lua format strings are described in the Lua reference manual, section String Manipulation, https://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.html#pdf-string.format.
Next: Smalltalk Format Strings, Previous: Lua Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
Object Pascal format strings are described in the documentation of the Free Pascal runtime library, section Format, https://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/rtl/sysutils/format.html.
Next: Qt Format Strings, Previous: Object Pascal Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
Smalltalk format strings are described in the GNU Smalltalk documentation,
class CharArray, methods ‘bindWith:’ and
‘bindWithArguments:’.
https://www.gnu.org/software/smalltalk/gst-manual/gst_68.html#SEC238.
In summary, a directive starts with ‘%’ and is followed by ‘%’
or a nonzero digit (‘1’ to ‘9’).
Next: Qt Format Strings, Previous: Smalltalk Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
Qt format strings are described in the documentation of the QString class file:/usr/lib/qt-4.3.0/doc/html/qstring.html. In summary, a directive consists of a ‘%’ followed by a digit. The same directive cannot occur more than once in a format string.
Next: KDE Format Strings, Previous: Qt Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
Qt format strings are described in the documentation of the QObject::tr method file:/usr/lib/qt-4.3.0/doc/html/qobject.html. In summary, the only allowed directive is ‘%n’.
Next: KUIT Format Strings, Previous: Qt Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
KDE 4 format strings are defined as follows: A directive consists of a ‘%’ followed by a non-zero decimal number. If a ‘%n’ occurs in a format strings, all of ‘%1’, ..., ‘%(n-1)’ must occur as well, except possibly one of them.
Next: Boost Format Strings, Previous: KDE Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
KUIT (KDE User Interface Text) is compatible with KDE 4 format strings, while it also allows programmers to add semantic information to a format string, through XML markup tags. For example, if the first format directive in a string is a filename, programmers could indicate that with a ‘filename’ tag, like ‘<filename>%1</filename>’.
KUIT format strings are described in https://api.kde.org/frameworks/ki18n/html/prg_guide.html#kuit_markup.
Next: Tcl Format Strings, Previous: KUIT Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
Boost format strings are described in the documentation of the
boost::format class, at
https://www.boost.org/libs/format/doc/format.html.
In summary, a directive has either the same syntax as in a C format string,
such as ‘%1$+5d’, or may be surrounded by vertical bars, such as
‘%|1$+5d|’ or ‘%|1$+5|’, or consists of just an argument number
between percent signs, such as ‘%1%’.
Next: Perl Format Strings, Previous: Boost Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
Tcl format strings are described in the format.n manual page, http://www.scriptics.com/man/tcl8.3/TclCmd/format.htm.
Next: PHP Format Strings, Previous: Tcl Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
There are two kinds of format strings in Perl: those acceptable to the
Perl built-in function printf, labelled as ‘perl-format’,
and those acceptable to the libintl-perl function __x,
labelled as ‘perl-brace-format’.
Perl printf format strings are described in the sprintf
section of ‘man perlfunc’.
Perl brace format strings are described in the Locale::TextDomain(3pm) manual page of the CPAN package libintl-perl. In brief, Perl format uses placeholders put between braces (‘{’ and ‘}’). The placeholder must have the syntax of simple identifiers.
Next: GCC internal Format Strings, Previous: Perl Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
PHP format strings are described in the documentation of the PHP function
sprintf, in phpdoc/manual/function.sprintf.html or
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.sprintf.php.
Next: GFC internal Format Strings, Previous: PHP Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
These format strings are used inside the GCC sources. In such a format string, a directive starts with ‘%’, is optionally followed by a size specifier ‘l’, an optional flag ‘+’, another optional flag ‘#’, and is finished by a specifier: ‘%’ denotes a literal percent sign, ‘c’ denotes a character, ‘s’ denotes a string, ‘i’ and ‘d’ denote an integer, ‘o’, ‘u’, ‘x’ denote an unsigned integer, ‘.*s’ denotes a string preceded by a width specification, ‘H’ denotes a ‘location_t *’ pointer, ‘D’ denotes a general declaration, ‘F’ denotes a function declaration, ‘T’ denotes a type, ‘A’ denotes a function argument, ‘C’ denotes a tree code, ‘E’ denotes an expression, ‘L’ denotes a programming language, ‘O’ denotes a binary operator, ‘P’ denotes a function parameter, ‘Q’ denotes an assignment operator, ‘V’ denotes a const/volatile qualifier.
Next: YCP Format Strings, Previous: GCC internal Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
These format strings are used inside the GNU Fortran Compiler sources, that is, the Fortran frontend in the GCC sources. In such a format string, a directive starts with ‘%’ and is finished by a specifier: ‘%’ denotes a literal percent sign, ‘C’ denotes the current source location, ‘L’ denotes a source location, ‘c’ denotes a character, ‘s’ denotes a string, ‘i’ and ‘d’ denote an integer, ‘u’ denotes an unsigned integer. ‘i’, ‘d’, and ‘u’ may be preceded by a size specifier ‘l’.
Previous: GFC internal Format Strings, Up: The Translator’s View [Contents][Index]
YCP sformat strings are described in the libycp documentation file:/usr/share/doc/packages/libycp/YCP-builtins.html. In summary, a directive starts with ‘%’ and is followed by ‘%’ or a nonzero digit (‘1’ to ‘9’).
Next: Individual Programming Languages, Previous: The Translator’s View, Up: Other Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
For the maintainer, the general procedure differs from the C language case:
XGETTEXT_OPTIONS
variable in po/Makevars (see Makevars in po/) should be adjusted to
match the xgettext options for that particular programming language.
If the package uses more than one programming language with gettext
support, it becomes necessary to change the POT file construction rule
in po/Makefile.in.in. It is recommended to make one xgettext
invocation per programming language, each with the options appropriate for
that language, and to combine the resulting files using msgcat.
Previous: The Maintainer’s View, Up: Other Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
Next: Python, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
gcc, gpp, gobjc, glibc, gettext
gcc, g++, gobjc, libc6-dev, libasprintf-dev
For C: c, h.
For C++: C, c++, cc, cxx, cpp, hpp.
For Objective C: m.
"abc"
_("abc")
gettext, dgettext, dcgettext, ngettext,
dngettext, dcngettext
textdomain function
bindtextdomain and wbindtextdomain functions
Programmer must call setlocale (LC_ALL, "")
#include <libintl.h>
#include <locale.h>
#define _(string) gettext (string)
Use
xgettext -k_
fprintf "%2$d %1$d"
In C++: autosprintf "%2$d %1$d"
(see Introduction in GNU autosprintf)
In C++ 20 or newer: std::vformat "{1} {0}"
autoconf (gettext.m4) and #if ENABLE_NLS
yes
The following examples are available in the examples directory:
hello-c, hello-c-gnome, hello-c++, hello-c++-qt,
hello-c++-kde, hello-c++-gnome, hello-c++-wxwidgets,
hello-objc, hello-objc-gnustep, hello-objc-gnome.
Next: Java, Previous: C, C++, Objective C, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
python
python
py
'abc', u'abc', r'abc', ur'abc',
"abc", u"abc", r"abc", ur"abc",
'''abc''', u'''abc''', r'''abc''', ur'''abc''',
"""abc""", u"""abc""", r"""abc""", ur"""abc"""
_('abc') etc.
gettext.gettext, gettext.dgettext,
gettext.ngettext, gettext.dngettext,
also ugettext, ungettext
gettext.textdomain function, or
gettext.install(domain) function
gettext.bindtextdomain function, or
gettext.install(domain,localedir) function
not used by the gettext emulation
import gettext
emulate
xgettext
'...%(ident)d...' % { 'ident': value }
'...{ident}...'.format(ident=value) (see PEP 3101)
fully portable
—
An example is available in the examples directory: hello-python.
A note about format strings: Python supports format strings with unnamed
arguments, such as '...%d...', and format strings with named arguments,
such as '...%(ident)d...'. The latter are preferable for
internationalized programs, for two reasons:
"'%(volume)s' has only %(freespace)d bytes free."
to
"Only %(freespace)d bytes free on '%(volume)s'."
Additionally, the identifiers also provide some context to the translator.
"one hour" instead of "1 hour". Omitting
individual arguments from format strings like this is only possible with
the named argument syntax. (With unnamed arguments, Python – unlike C –
verifies that the format string uses all supplied arguments.)
Next: C#, Previous: Python, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
java, java2
default-jdk
java
"abc", """text block"""
i18n("abc")
GettextResource.gettext, GettextResource.ngettext,
GettextResource.pgettext, GettextResource.npgettext
—, use ResourceBundle.getResource instead
—, use CLASSPATH instead
automatic
—
—, uses a Java specific message catalog format
xgettext -ki18n
MessageFormat.format "{1,number} {0,number}"
or String.format "%2$d %1$d"
fully portable
—
Before marking strings as internationalizable, uses of the string
concatenation operator need to be converted to MessageFormat
applications. For example, "file "+filename+" not found" becomes
MessageFormat.format("file {0} not found", new Object[] { filename }).
Only after this is done, can the strings be marked and extracted.
GNU gettext uses the native Java internationalization mechanism, namely
ResourceBundles. There are two formats of ResourceBundles:
.properties files and .class files. The .properties
format is a text file which the translators can directly edit, like PO
files, but which doesn’t support plural forms. Whereas the .class
format is compiled from .java source code and can support plural
forms (provided it is accessed through an appropriate API, see below).
To convert a PO file to a .properties file, the msgcat
program can be used with the option --properties-output. To convert
a .properties file back to a PO file, the msgcat program
can be used with the option --properties-input. All the tools
that manipulate PO files can work with .properties files as well,
if given the --properties-input and/or --properties-output
option.
To convert a PO file to a ResourceBundle class, the msgfmt program
can be used with the option --java or --java2. To convert a
ResourceBundle back to a PO file, the msgunfmt program can be used
with the option --java.
Two different programmatic APIs can be used to access ResourceBundles.
Note that both APIs work with all kinds of ResourceBundles, whether
GNU gettext generated classes, or other .class or .properties
files.
java.util.ResourceBundle API.
In particular, its getString function returns a string translation.
Note that a missing translation yields a MissingResourceException.
This has the advantage of being the standard API. And it does not require
any additional libraries, only the msgcat generated .properties
files or the msgfmt generated .class files. But it cannot do
plural handling, even if the resource was generated by msgfmt from
a PO file with plural handling.
gnu.gettext.GettextResource API.
Reference documentation in Javadoc 1.1 style format is in the javadoc2 directory.
Its gettext function returns a string translation. Note that when
a translation is missing, the msgid argument is returned unchanged.
This has the advantage of having the ngettext function for plural
handling and the pgettext and npgettext for strings constraint
to a particular context.
To use this API, one needs the libintl.jar file which is part of
the GNU gettext package and distributed under the LGPL.
Four examples, using the second API, are available in the examples
directory: hello-java, hello-java-awt, hello-java-swing,
hello-java-qtjambi.
Now, to make use of the API and define a shorthand for ‘getString’, there are three idioms that you can choose from:
ResourceBundle instance and the shorthand:
private static ResourceBundle myResources =
ResourceBundle.getBundle("domain-name");
public static String i18n(String s) {
return myResources.getString(s);
}
All classes containing internationalized strings then contain
import static Util.i18n;
and the shorthand is used like this:
System.out.println(i18n("Operation completed."));
ResourceBundle instance:
public static ResourceBundle myResources =
ResourceBundle.getBundle("domain-name");
All classes containing internationalized strings then contain
private static ResourceBundle res = Util.myResources;
private static String i18n(String s) { return res.getString(s); }
and the shorthand is used like this:
System.out.println(i18n("Operation completed."));
public class S {
public static ResourceBundle myResources =
ResourceBundle.getBundle("domain-name");
public static String i18n(String s) {
return myResources.getString(s);
}
}
and the shorthand is used like this:
System.out.println(S.i18n("Operation completed."));
Which of the three idioms you choose, will depend on whether your project requires portability to Java versions prior to Java 1.5 and, if so, whether copying two lines of codes into every class is more acceptable in your project than a class with a single-letter name.
Next: JavaScript, Previous: Java, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
mono
mono-mcs
cs
"abc", @"abc"
_("abc")
GettextResourceManager.GetString,
GettextResourceManager.GetPluralString
GettextResourceManager.GetParticularString
GettextResourceManager.GetParticularPluralString
new GettextResourceManager(domain)
—, compiled message catalogs are located in subdirectories of the directory containing the executable
automatic
—
—, uses a C# specific message catalog format
xgettext -k_
String.Format "{1} {0}"
fully portable
—
Before marking strings as internationalizable, uses of the string
concatenation operator need to be converted to String.Format
invocations. For example, "file "+filename+" not found" becomes
String.Format("file {0} not found", filename).
Only after this is done, can the strings be marked and extracted.
GNU gettext uses the native C#/.NET internationalization mechanism, namely
the classes ResourceManager and ResourceSet. Applications
use the ResourceManager methods to retrieve the native language
translation of strings. An instance of ResourceSet is the in-memory
representation of a message catalog file. The ResourceManager loads
and accesses ResourceSet instances as needed to look up the
translations.
There are two formats of ResourceSets that can be directly loaded by
the C# runtime: .resources files and .dll files.
.resources format is a binary file usually generated through the
resgen or monoresgen utility, but which doesn’t support plural
forms. .resources files can also be embedded in .NET .exe files.
This only affects whether a file system access is performed to load the message
catalog; it doesn’t affect the contents of the message catalog.
.dll format is a binary file that is compiled
from .cs source code and can support plural forms (provided it is
accessed through the GNU gettext API, see below).
Note that these .NET .dll and .exe files are not tied to a
particular platform; their file format and GNU gettext for C# can be used
on any platform.
To convert a PO file to a .resources file, the msgfmt program
can be used with the option ‘--csharp-resources’. To convert a
.resources file back to a PO file, the msgunfmt program can be
used with the option ‘--csharp-resources’. You can also, in some cases,
use the monoresgen program (from the mono/mcs package).
This program can also convert a .resources file back to a PO file. But
beware: as of this writing (January 2004), the monoresgen converter is
quite buggy.
To convert a PO file to a .dll file, the msgfmt program can be
used with the option --csharp. The result will be a .dll file
containing a subclass of GettextResourceSet, which itself is a subclass
of ResourceSet. To convert a .dll file containing a
GettextResourceSet subclass back to a PO file, the msgunfmt
program can be used with the option --csharp.
The advantages of the .dll format over the .resources format
are:
ResourceManager constructor provided by the system, the set of
.resources files for an application must be specified when the
application is built and cannot be extended afterwards.
.dll format supports the plural
handling function GetPluralString. Whereas .resources files can
only contain data and only support lookups that depend on a single string.
.dll format supports the
query-with-context functions GetParticularString and
GetParticularPluralString. Whereas .resources files can
only contain data and only support lookups that depend on a single string.
GettextResourceManager that loads the message catalogs in
.dll format also provides for inheritance on a per-message basis.
For example, in Austrian (de_AT) locale, translations from the German
(de) message catalog will be used for messages not found in the
Austrian message catalog. This has the consequence that the Austrian
translators need only translate those few messages for which the translation
into Austrian differs from the German one. Whereas when working with
.resources files, each message catalog must provide the translations
of all messages by itself.
GettextResourceManager that loads the message catalogs in
.dll format also provides for a fallback: The English msgid is
returned when no translation can be found. Whereas when working with
.resources files, a language-neutral .resources file must
explicitly be provided as a fallback.
On the side of the programmatic APIs, the programmer can use either the
standard ResourceManager API and the GNU GettextResourceManager
API. The latter is an extension of the former, because
GettextResourceManager is a subclass of ResourceManager.
System.Resources.ResourceManager API.
This API works with resources in .resources format.
The creation of the ResourceManager is done through
new ResourceManager(domainname, Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly())
The GetString function returns a string’s translation. Note that this
function returns null when a translation is missing (i.e. not even found in
the fallback resource file).
GNU.Gettext.GettextResourceManager API.
This API works with resources in .dll format.
Reference documentation is in the csharpdoc directory.
The creation of the ResourceManager is done through
new GettextResourceManager(domainname)
The GetString function returns a string’s translation. Note that when
a translation is missing, the msgid argument is returned unchanged.
The GetPluralString function returns a string translation with plural
handling, like the ngettext function in C.
The GetParticularString function returns a string’s translation,
specific to a particular context, like the pgettext function in C.
Note that when a translation is missing, the msgid argument is returned
unchanged.
The GetParticularPluralString function returns a string translation,
specific to a particular context, with plural handling, like the
npgettext function in C.
To use this API, one needs the GNU.Gettext.dll file which is part of
the GNU gettext package and distributed under the LGPL.
You can also mix both approaches: use the
GNU.Gettext.GettextResourceManager constructor, but otherwise use
only the ResourceManager type and only the GetString method.
This is appropriate when you want to profit from the tools for PO files,
but don’t want to change an existing source code that uses
ResourceManager and don’t (yet) need the GetPluralString method.
Two examples, using the second API, are available in the examples
directory: hello-csharp, hello-csharp-forms.
Now, to make use of the API and define a shorthand for ‘GetString’, there are two idioms that you can choose from:
ResourceManager instance:
public static GettextResourceManager MyResourceManager =
new GettextResourceManager("domain-name");
All classes containing internationalized strings then contain
private static GettextResourceManager Res = Util.MyResourceManager;
private static String _(String s) { return Res.GetString(s); }
and the shorthand is used like this:
Console.WriteLine(_("Operation completed."));
public class S {
public static GettextResourceManager MyResourceManager =
new GettextResourceManager("domain-name");
public static String _(String s) {
return MyResourceManager.GetString(s);
}
}
and the shorthand is used like this:
Console.WriteLine(S._("Operation completed."));
Which of the two idioms you choose, will depend on whether copying two lines of codes into every class is more acceptable in your project than a class with a single-letter name.
Next: GNU guile - Scheme, Previous: C#, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
js
gjs
js
"abc"
'abc'
`abc`
_("abc")
gettext, dgettext, dcgettext, ngettext,
dngettext
textdomain function
bindtextdomain function
automatic
—
use, or emulate
xgettext
—
On platforms without gettext, the functions are not available.
—
Next: GNU clisp - Common Lisp, Previous: JavaScript, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
guile
guile-2.0
scm
"abc"
(_ "abc"), _"abc" (GIMP script-fu extension)
gettext, ngettext
textdomain
bindtextdomain
(catch #t (lambda () (setlocale LC_ALL "")) (lambda args #f))
(use-modules (ice-9 format))
use
xgettext -k_
—
On platforms without gettext, no translation.
—
An example is available in the examples directory: hello-guile.
Next: GNU clisp C sources, Previous: GNU guile - Scheme, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
clisp 2.28 or newer
clisp
lisp
"abc"
(_ "abc"), (ENGLISH "abc")
i18n:gettext, i18n:ngettext
i18n:textdomain
i18n:textdomaindir
automatic
—
use
xgettext -k_ -kENGLISH
format "~1@*~D ~0@*~D"
On platforms without gettext, no translation.
—
An example is available in the examples directory: hello-clisp.
Next: Emacs Lisp, Previous: GNU clisp - Common Lisp, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
clisp
clisp
d
"abc"
ENGLISH ? "abc" : ""
GETTEXT("abc")
GETTEXTL("abc")
clgettext, clgettextl
—
—
automatic
#include "lispbibl.c"
use
clisp-xgettext
fprintf "%2$d %1$d"
On platforms without gettext, no translation.
—
Next: librep, Previous: GNU clisp C sources, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
emacs, xemacs
emacs, xemacs21
el
"abc"
(_"abc")
gettext, dgettext (xemacs only)
domain special form (xemacs only)
bind-text-domain function (xemacs only)
automatic
—
use
xgettext
format "%2$d %1$d"
Only XEmacs. Without I18N3 defined at build time, no translation.
—
Next: Ruby, Previous: Emacs Lisp, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
librep 0.15.3 or newer
librep16
jl
"abc"
(_"abc")
gettext
textdomain function
bindtextdomain function
—
(require 'rep.i18n.gettext)
use
xgettext
format "%2$d %1$d"
On platforms without gettext, no translation.
—
An example is available in the examples directory: hello-librep.
Next: sh - Shell Script, Previous: librep, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
ruby, ruby-gettext
ruby, ruby-gettext
rb
"abc", 'abc', %q/abc/ etc.,
%q(abc), %q[abc], %q{abc}
_("abc")
gettext, ngettext
—
bindtextdomain function
—
require 'gettext'
include GetText
emulate
xgettext
sprintf("%2$d %1$d", x, y)
"%{new} replaces %{old}" % {:old => oldvalue, :new => newvalue}
fully portable
—
Next: bash - Bourne-Again Shell Script, Previous: Ruby, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
bash, gettext
bash, gettext-base
sh
"abc", 'abc', abc
"`gettext \"abc\"`"
gettext, ngettext programs
eval_gettext, eval_ngettext, eval_pgettext,
eval_npgettext shell functions
environment variable TEXTDOMAIN
environment variable TEXTDOMAINDIR
automatic
. gettext.sh
use
xgettext
—
fully portable
—
An example is available in the examples directory: hello-sh.
gettext.shgettext programngettext programenvsubst programeval_gettext functioneval_ngettext functioneval_pgettext functioneval_npgettext function
Next: Contents of gettext.sh, Up: sh - Shell Script [Contents][Index]
Preparing a shell script for internationalization is conceptually similar to the steps described in Preparing Program Sources. The concrete steps for shell scripts are as follows.
. gettext.sh
near the top of the script. gettext.sh is a shell function library
that provides the functions
eval_gettext (see Invoking the eval_gettext function),
eval_ngettext (see Invoking the eval_ngettext function),
eval_pgettext (see Invoking the eval_pgettext function), and
eval_npgettext (see Invoking the eval_npgettext function).
You have to ensure that gettext.sh can be found in the PATH.
TEXTDOMAIN and TEXTDOMAINDIR environment
variables. Usually TEXTDOMAIN is the package or program name, and
TEXTDOMAINDIR is the absolute pathname corresponding to
$prefix/share/locale, where $prefix is the installation location.
TEXTDOMAIN=@PACKAGE@ export TEXTDOMAIN TEXTDOMAINDIR=@LOCALEDIR@ export TEXTDOMAINDIR
"`...`" or "$(...)"), variable access with defaulting (like
${variable-default}), access to positional arguments
(like $0, $1, ...) or highly volatile shell variables (like
$?). This can always be done through simple local code restructuring.
For example,
echo "Usage: $0 [OPTION] FILE..."
becomes
program_name=$0 echo "Usage: $program_name [OPTION] FILE..."
Similarly,
echo "Remaining files: `ls | wc -l`"
becomes
filecount="`ls | wc -l`" echo "Remaining files: $filecount"
When doing this, you also need to add an extra backslash before the dollar sign in references to shell variables, so that the ‘eval_gettext’ function receives the translatable string before the variable values are substituted into it. For example,
echo "Remaining files: $filecount"
becomes
eval_gettext "Remaining files: \$filecount"; echo
If the output command is not ‘echo’, you can make it use ‘echo’ nevertheless, through the use of backquotes. However, note that inside backquotes, backslashes must be doubled to be effective (because the backquoting eats one level of backslashes). For example, assuming that ‘error’ is a shell function that signals an error,
error "file not found: $filename"
is first transformed into
error "`echo \"file not found: \$filename\"`"
which then becomes
error "`eval_gettext \"file not found: \\\$filename\"`"
Next: Invoking the gettext program, Previous: Preparing Shell Scripts for Internationalization, Up: sh - Shell Script [Contents][Index]
gettext.shgettext.sh, contained in the run-time package of GNU gettext, provides
the following:
echo is set to a command that outputs its first argument
and a newline, without interpreting backslashes in the argument string.
eval_gettext function.
eval_ngettext function.
eval_pgettext function.
eval_npgettext function.
Next: Invoking the ngettext program, Previous: Contents of gettext.sh, Up: sh - Shell Script [Contents][Index]
gettext programgettext [option] [[textdomain] msgid] gettext [option] -s [msgid]...
The gettext program displays the native language translation of a
textual message.
Arguments
Specify the context for the messages to be translated. See Using contexts for solving ambiguities for details.
Retrieve translated messages from textdomain. Usually a textdomain corresponds to a package, a program, or a module of a program.
Enable expansion of some escape sequences. This option is for compatibility with the ‘echo’ program or shell built-in. The escape sequences ‘\a’, ‘\b’, ‘\c’, ‘\f’, ‘\n’, ‘\r’, ‘\t’, ‘\v’, ‘\\’, and ‘\’ followed by one to three octal digits, are interpreted like the System V ‘echo’ program did.
This option is only for compatibility with the ‘echo’ program or shell built-in. It has no effect.
Display this help and exit.
This option has only an effect if the -s option is given. It
suppresses the additional newline at the end.
Output version information and exit.
Retrieve translated message corresponding to msgid from textdomain.
If the textdomain parameter is not given, the domain is determined from
the environment variable TEXTDOMAIN. If the message catalog is not
found in the regular directory, another location can be specified with the
environment variable TEXTDOMAINDIR.
When used with the -s option the program behaves like the ‘echo’
command. But it does not simply copy its arguments to stdout. Instead those
messages found in the selected catalog are translated. Also, a newline is
added at the end, unless either the option -n is specified or the
option -e is specified and some of the argument strings contains a
‘\c’ escape sequence.
Note: xgettext supports only the one-argument form of the
gettext invocation, where no options are present and the
textdomain is implicit, from the environment.
Next: Invoking the envsubst program, Previous: Invoking the gettext program, Up: sh - Shell Script [Contents][Index]
ngettext programngettext [option] [textdomain] msgid msgid-plural count
The ngettext program displays the native language translation of a
textual message whose grammatical form depends on a number.
Arguments
Specify the context for the messages to be translated. See Using contexts for solving ambiguities for details.
Retrieve translated messages from textdomain. Usually a textdomain corresponds to a package, a program, or a module of a program.
Enable expansion of some escape sequences. This option is for compatibility with the ‘gettext’ program. The escape sequences ‘\a’, ‘\b’, ‘\f’, ‘\n’, ‘\r’, ‘\t’, ‘\v’, ‘\\’, and ‘\’ followed by one to three octal digits, are interpreted like the System V ‘echo’ program did.
This option is only for compatibility with the ‘gettext’ program. It has no effect.
Display this help and exit.
Output version information and exit.
Retrieve translated message from textdomain.
Translate msgid (English singular) / msgid-plural (English plural).
Choose singular/plural form based on this value.
If the textdomain parameter is not given, the domain is determined from
the environment variable TEXTDOMAIN. If the message catalog is not
found in the regular directory, another location can be specified with the
environment variable TEXTDOMAINDIR.
Note: xgettext supports only the three-arguments form of the
ngettext invocation, where no options are present and the
textdomain is implicit, from the environment.
Next: Invoking the eval_gettext function, Previous: Invoking the ngettext program, Up: sh - Shell Script [Contents][Index]
envsubst programenvsubst [option] [shell-format]
The envsubst program substitutes the values of environment variables.
Operation mode
Output the variables occurring in shell-format.
Informative output
In normal operation mode, standard input is copied to standard output,
with references to environment variables of the form $VARIABLE or
${VARIABLE} being replaced with the corresponding values. If a
shell-format is given, only those environment variables that are
referenced in shell-format are substituted; otherwise all environment
variables references occurring in standard input are substituted.
These substitutions are a subset of the substitutions that a shell performs
on unquoted and double-quoted strings. Other kinds of substitutions done
by a shell, such as ${variable-default} or
$(command-list) or `command-list`, are not performed
by the envsubst program, due to security reasons.
When --variables is used, standard input is ignored, and the output
consists of the environment variables that are referenced in
shell-format, one per line.
Next: Invoking the eval_ngettext function, Previous: Invoking the envsubst program, Up: sh - Shell Script [Contents][Index]
eval_gettext functioneval_gettext msgid
This function outputs the native language translation of a textual message, performing dollar-substitution on the result. Note that only shell variables mentioned in msgid will be dollar-substituted in the result.
Next: Invoking the eval_pgettext function, Previous: Invoking the eval_gettext function, Up: sh - Shell Script [Contents][Index]
eval_ngettext functioneval_ngettext msgid msgid-plural count
This function outputs the native language translation of a textual message whose grammatical form depends on a number, performing dollar-substitution on the result. Note that only shell variables mentioned in msgid or msgid-plural will be dollar-substituted in the result.
Next: Invoking the eval_npgettext function, Previous: Invoking the eval_ngettext function, Up: sh - Shell Script [Contents][Index]
eval_pgettext functioneval_pgettext msgctxt msgid
This function outputs the native language translation of a textual message in the given context msgctxt (see Using contexts for solving ambiguities), performing dollar-substitution on the result. Note that only shell variables mentioned in msgid will be dollar-substituted in the result.
Previous: Invoking the eval_pgettext function, Up: sh - Shell Script [Contents][Index]
eval_npgettext functioneval_npgettext msgctxt msgid msgid-plural count
This function outputs the native language translation of a textual message whose grammatical form depends on a number in the given context msgctxt (see Using contexts for solving ambiguities), performing dollar-substitution on the result. Note that only shell variables mentioned in msgid or msgid-plural will be dollar-substituted in the result.
Next: GNU awk, Previous: sh - Shell Script, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
GNU bash 2.0 or newer has a special shorthand for translating a
string and substituting variable values in it: $"msgid". But
the use of this construct is discouraged, due to the security
holes it opens and due to its portability problems.
The security holes of $"..." come from the fact that after looking up
the translation of the string, bash processes it like it processes
any double-quoted string: dollar and backquote processing, like ‘eval’
does.
0x60. For example, the byte sequence \xe0\x60 is a single
character in these locales. Many versions of bash (all versions
up to bash-2.05, and newer versions on platforms without mbsrtowcs()
function) don’t know about character boundaries and see a backquote character
where there is only a particular Chinese character. Thus it can start
executing part of the translation as a command list. This situation can occur
even without the translator being aware of it: if the translator provides
translations in the UTF-8 encoding, it is the gettext() function which
will, during its conversion from the translator’s encoding to the user’s
locale’s encoding, produce the dangerous \x60 bytes.
"`...`" or dollar-parentheses "$(...)" in her translations.
The enclosed strings would be executed as command lists by the shell.
The portability problem is that bash must be built with
internationalization support; this is normally not the case on systems
that don’t have the gettext() function in libc.
Next: Lua, Previous: bash - Bourne-Again Shell Script, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
gawk 3.1 or newer
gawk
awk, gawk, twjr.
The file extension twjr is used by TexiWeb Jr
(https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/texiwebjr).
"abc"
_"abc"
dcgettext, missing dcngettext in gawk-3.1.0
TEXTDOMAIN variable
bindtextdomain function
automatic, but missing setlocale (LC_MESSAGES, "") in gawk-3.1.0
—
use
xgettext
printf "%2$d %1$d" (GNU awk only)
On platforms without gettext, no translation. On non-GNU awks, you must
define dcgettext, dcngettext and bindtextdomain
yourself.
—
An example is available in the examples directory: hello-gawk.
Next: Pascal - Free Pascal Compiler, Previous: GNU awk, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
lua
lua, lua-gettext
You need to install the lua-gettext package from
https://gitlab.com/sukhichev/lua-gettext/blob/master/README.us.md.
Debian and Ubuntu packages of it are available. Download the
appropriate one, and install it through
‘sudo dpkg -i lua-gettext_0.0_amd64.deb’.
lua
"abc"
'abc'
[[abc]]
[=[abc]=]
[==[abc]==]
_("abc")
gettext.gettext, gettext.dgettext, gettext.dcgettext,
gettext.ngettext, gettext.dngettext, gettext.dcngettext
textdomain function
bindtextdomain function
automatic
require 'gettext' or running lua interpreter with -l gettext option
use
xgettext
—
On platforms without gettext, the functions are not available.
—
Next: GNU Smalltalk, Previous: Lua, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
fpk
fp-compiler, fp-units-fcl
pp, pas
'abc'
automatic
—, use ResourceString data type instead
—, use TranslateResourceStrings function instead
—, use TranslateResourceStrings function instead
automatic, but uses only LANG, not LC_MESSAGES or LC_ALL
{$mode delphi} or {$mode objfpc}uses gettext;
emulate partially
ppc386 followed by xgettext or rstconv
uses sysutils;format "%1:d %0:d"
?
—
The Pascal compiler has special support for the ResourceString data
type. It generates a .rst file. This is then converted to a
.pot file by use of xgettext or rstconv. At runtime,
a .mo file corresponding to translations of this .pot file
can be loaded using the TranslateResourceStrings function in the
gettext unit.
An example is available in the examples directory: hello-pascal.
Next: Vala, Previous: Pascal - Free Pascal Compiler, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
smalltalk
gnu-smalltalk
st
'abc'
NLS ? 'abc'
LcMessagesDomain>>#at:, LcMessagesDomain>>#at:plural:with:
LcMessages>>#domain:localeDirectory: (returns a LcMessagesDomain
object).
Example: I18N Locale default messages domain: 'gettext' localeDirectory: /usr/local/share/locale'
LcMessages>>#domain:localeDirectory:, see above.
Automatic if you use I18N Locale default.
PackageLoader fileInPackage: 'I18N'!
emulate
xgettext
'%1 %2' bindWith: 'Hello' with: 'world'
fully portable
—
An example is available in the examples directory:
hello-smalltalk.
Next: wxWidgets library, Previous: GNU Smalltalk, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
vala
valac
vala
"abc"
"""abc"""
_("abc")
gettext, dgettext, dcgettext, ngettext,
dngettext, dpgettext, dpgettext2
textdomain function, defined under the Intl namespace
bindtextdomain function, defined under the Intl namespace
Programmer must call Intl.setlocale (LocaleCategory.ALL, "")
—
Use
xgettext
Same as for the C language.
autoconf (gettext.m4) and #if ENABLE_NLS
yes
Next: Tcl - Tk’s scripting language, Previous: Vala, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
wxGTK, gettext
libwxgtk3.0-dev
cpp
"abc"
_("abc")
wxLocale::GetString, wxGetTranslation
wxLocale::AddCatalog
wxLocale::AddCatalogLookupPathPrefix
wxLocale::Init, wxSetLocale
#include <wx/intl.h>
emulate, see include/wx/intl.h and src/common/intl.cpp
xgettext
wxString::Format supports positions if and only if the system has
wprintf(), vswprintf() functions and they support positions
according to POSIX.
fully portable
yes
Next: Perl, Previous: wxWidgets library, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
tcl
tcl
tcl
"abc"
[_ "abc"]
::msgcat::mc
—
—, use ::msgcat::mcload instead
automatic, uses LANG, but ignores LC_MESSAGES and LC_ALL
package require msgcat
proc _ {s} {return [::msgcat::mc $s]}
—, uses a Tcl specific message catalog format
xgettext -k_
format "%2\$d %1\$d"
fully portable
—
Two examples are available in the examples directory:
hello-tcl, hello-tcl-tk.
Before marking strings as internationalizable, substitutions of variables
into the string need to be converted to format applications. For
example, "file $filename not found" becomes
[format "file %s not found" $filename].
Only after this is done, can the strings be marked and extracted.
After marking, this example becomes
[format [_ "file %s not found"] $filename] or
[msgcat::mc "file %s not found" $filename]. Note that the
msgcat::mc function implicitly calls format when more than one
argument is given.
Next: PHP Hypertext Preprocessor, Previous: Tcl - Tk’s scripting language, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
perl
perl, libintl-perl
pl, PL, pm, perl, cgi
"abc"
'abc'
qq (abc)
q (abc)
qr /abc/
qx (/bin/date)
/pattern match/
?pattern match?
s/substitution/operators/
$tied_hash{"message"}
$tied_hash_reference->{"message"}
__ (double underscore)
gettext, dgettext, dcgettext, ngettext,
dngettext, dcngettext, pgettext, dpgettext,
dcpgettext, npgettext, dnpgettext,
dcnpgettext
textdomain function
bindtextdomain function
bind_textdomain_codeset function
Use setlocale (LC_ALL, "");
use POSIX;
use Locale::TextDomain; (included in the package libintl-perl
which is available on the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network CPAN,
https://www.cpan.org/).
platform dependent: gettext_pp emulates, gettext_xs uses GNU gettext
xgettext -k__ -k\$__ -k%__ -k__x -k__n:1,2 -k__nx:1,2 -k__xn:1,2
-kN__ -kN__n:1,2 -k__p:1c,2 -k__np:1c,2,3 -kN__p:1c,2 -kN__np:1c,2,3
Both kinds of format strings support formatting with positions.
printf "%2\$d %1\$d", ... (requires Perl 5.8.0 or newer)
__expand("[new] replaces [old]", old => $oldvalue, new => $newvalue)
The libintl-perl package is platform independent but is not
part of the Perl core. The programmer is responsible for
providing a dummy implementation of the required functions if the
package is not installed on the target system.
—
Included in libintl-perl, available on CPAN
(https://www.cpan.org/).
An example is available in the examples directory: hello-perl.
The xgettext parser backend for Perl differs significantly from
the parser backends for other programming languages, just as Perl
itself differs significantly from other programming languages. The
Perl parser backend offers many more string marking facilities than
the other backends but it also has some Perl specific limitations, the
worst probably being its imperfectness.
Next: Which keywords will xgettext look for?, Up: Perl [Contents][Index]
It is often heard that only Perl can parse Perl. This is not true. Perl cannot be parsed at all, it can only be executed. Perl has various built-in ambiguities that can only be resolved at runtime.
The following example may illustrate one common problem:
print gettext "Hello World!";
Although this example looks like a bullet-proof case of a function invocation, it is not:
open gettext, ">testfile" or die; print gettext "Hello world!"
In this context, the string gettext looks more like a
file handle. But not necessarily:
use Locale::Messages qw (:libintl_h); open gettext ">testfile" or die; print gettext "Hello world!";
Now, the file is probably syntactically incorrect, provided that the module
Locale::Messages found first in the Perl include path exports a
function gettext. But what if the module
Locale::Messages really looks like this?
use vars qw (*gettext); 1;
In this case, the string gettext will be interpreted as a file
handle again, and the above example will create a file testfile
and write the string “Hello world!” into it. Even advanced
control flow analysis will not really help:
if (0.5 < rand) {
eval "use Sane";
} else {
eval "use InSane";
}
print gettext "Hello world!";
If the module Sane exports a function gettext that does
what we expect, and the module InSane opens a file for writing
and associates the handle gettext with this output
stream, we are clueless again about what will happen at runtime. It is
completely unpredictable. The truth is that Perl has so many ways to
fill its symbol table at runtime that it is impossible to interpret a
particular piece of code without executing it.
Of course, xgettext will not execute your Perl sources while
scanning for translatable strings, but rather use heuristics in order
to guess what you meant.
Another problem is the ambiguity of the slash and the question mark. Their interpretation depends on the context:
# A pattern match. print "OK\n" if /foobar/; # A division. print 1 / 2; # Another pattern match. print "OK\n" if ?foobar?; # Conditional. print $x ? "foo" : "bar";
The slash may either act as the division operator or introduce a
pattern match, whereas the question mark may act as the ternary
conditional operator or as a pattern match, too. Other programming
languages like awk present similar problems, but the consequences of a
misinterpretation are particularly nasty with Perl sources. In awk
for instance, a statement can never exceed one line and the parser
can recover from a parsing error at the next newline and interpret
the rest of the input stream correctly. Perl is different, as a
pattern match is terminated by the next appearance of the delimiter
(the slash or the question mark) in the input stream, regardless of
the semantic context. If a slash is really a division sign but
mis-interpreted as a pattern match, the rest of the input file is most
probably parsed incorrectly.
There are certain cases, where the ambiguity cannot be resolved at all:
$x = wantarray ? 1 : 0;
The Perl built-in function wantarray does not accept any arguments.
The Perl parser therefore knows that the question mark does not start
a regular expression but is the ternary conditional operator.
sub wantarrays {}
$x = wantarrays ? 1 : 0;
Now the situation is different. The function wantarrays takes
a variable number of arguments (like any non-prototyped Perl function).
The question mark is now the delimiter of a pattern match, and hence
the piece of code does not compile.
sub wantarrays() {}
$x = wantarrays ? 1 : 0;
Now the function is prototyped, Perl knows that it does not accept any
arguments, and the question mark is therefore interpreted as the
ternaray operator again. But that unfortunately outsmarts xgettext.
The Perl parser in xgettext cannot know whether a function has
a prototype and what that prototype would look like. It therefore makes
an educated guess. If a function is known to be a Perl built-in and
this function does not accept any arguments, a following question mark
or slash is treated as an operator, otherwise as the delimiter of a
following regular expression. The Perl built-ins that do not accept
arguments are wantarray, fork, time, times,
getlogin, getppid, getpwent, getgrent,
gethostent, getnetent, getprotoent, getservent,
setpwent, setgrent, endpwent, endgrent,
endhostent, endnetent, endprotoent, and
endservent.
If you find that xgettext fails to extract strings from
portions of your sources, you should therefore look out for slashes
and/or question marks preceding these sections. You may have come
across a bug in xgettext’s Perl parser (and of course you
should report that bug). In the meantime you should consider to
reformulate your code in a manner less challenging to xgettext.
In particular, if the parser is too dumb to see that a function does not accept arguments, use parentheses:
$x = somefunc() ? 1 : 0; $y = (somefunc) ? 1 : 0;
In fact the Perl parser itself has similar problems and warns you about such constructs.
Next: How to Extract Hash Keys, Previous: General Problems Parsing Perl Code, Up: Perl [Contents][Index]
Unless you instruct xgettext otherwise by invoking it with one
of the options --keyword or -k, it will recognize the
following keywords in your Perl sources:
gettext
dgettext:2
The second argument will be extracted.
dcgettext:2
The second argument will be extracted.
ngettext:1,2
The first (singular) and the second (plural) argument will be extracted.
dngettext:2,3
The second (singular) and the third (plural) argument will be extracted.
dcngettext:2,3
The second (singular) and the third (plural) argument will be extracted.
pgettext:1c,2
The first (message context) and the second argument will be extracted.
dpgettext:2c,3
The second (message context) and the third argument will be extracted.
dcpgettext:2c,3
The second (message context) and the third argument will be extracted.
npgettext:1c,2,3
The first (message context), second (singular), and third (plural) argument will be extracted.
dnpgettext:2c,3,4
The second (message context), third (singular), and fourth (plural) argument will be extracted.
dcnpgettext:2c,3,4
The second (message context), third (singular), and fourth (plural) argument will be extracted.
gettext_noop
%gettext
The keys of lookups into the hash %gettext will be extracted.
$gettext
The keys of lookups into the hash reference $gettext will be extracted.
Next: What are Strings And Quote-like Expressions?, Previous: Which keywords will xgettext look for?, Up: Perl [Contents][Index]
Translating messages at runtime is normally performed by looking up the
original string in the translation database and returning the
translated version. The “natural” Perl implementation is a hash
lookup, and, of course, xgettext supports such practice.
print __"Hello world!";
print $__{"Hello world!"};
print $__->{"Hello world!"};
print $$__{"Hello world!"};
The above four lines all do the same thing. The Perl module
Locale::TextDomain exports by default a hash %__ that
is tied to the function __(). It also exports a reference
$__ to %__.
If an argument to the xgettext option --keyword,
resp. -k starts with a percent sign, the rest of the keyword is
interpreted as the name of a hash. If it starts with a dollar
sign, the rest of the keyword is interpreted as a reference to a
hash.
Note that you can omit the quotation marks (single or double) around the hash key (almost) whenever Perl itself allows it:
print $gettext{Error};
The exact rule is: You can omit the surrounding quotes, when the hash
key is a valid C (!) identifier, i.e. when it starts with an
underscore or an ASCII letter and is followed by an arbitrary number
of underscores, ASCII letters or digits. Other Unicode characters
are not allowed, regardless of the use utf8 pragma.
Next: Invalid Uses Of String Interpolation, Previous: How to Extract Hash Keys, Up: Perl [Contents][Index]
Perl offers a plethora of different string constructs. Those that can
be used either as arguments to functions or inside braces for hash
lookups are generally supported by xgettext.
print gettext "Hello World!";
print gettext 'Hello World!';
print gettext qq |Hello World!|; print gettext qq <E-mail: <guido\@imperia.net>>;
The operator qq is fully supported. You can use arbitrary
delimiters, including the four bracketing delimiters (round, angle,
square, curly) that nest.
print gettext q |Hello World!|; print gettext q <E-mail: <guido@imperia.net>>;
The operator q is fully supported. You can use arbitrary
delimiters, including the four bracketing delimiters (round, angle,
square, curly) that nest.
print gettext qx ;LANGUAGE=C /bin/date; print gettext qx [/usr/bin/ls | grep '^[A-Z]*'];
The operator qx is fully supported. You can use arbitrary
delimiters, including the four bracketing delimiters (round, angle,
square, curly) that nest.
The example is actually a useless use of gettext. It will
invoke the gettext function on the output of the command
specified with the qx operator. The feature was included
in order to make the interface consistent (the parser will extract
all strings and quote-like expressions).
print gettext <<'EOF'; program not found in $PATH EOF print ngettext <<EOF, <<"EOF"; one file deleted EOF several files deleted EOF
Here-documents are recognized. If the delimiter is enclosed in single quotes, the string is not interpolated. If it is enclosed in double quotes or has no quotes at all, the string is interpolated.
Delimiters that start with a digit are not supported!
Next: Valid Uses Of String Interpolation, Previous: What are Strings And Quote-like Expressions?, Up: Perl [Contents][Index]
Perl is capable of interpolating variables into strings. This offers some nice features in localized programs but can also lead to problems.
A common error is a construct like the following:
print gettext "This is the program $0!\n";
Perl will interpolate at runtime the value of the variable $0
into the argument of the gettext() function. Hence, this
argument is not a string constant but a variable argument ($0
is a global variable that holds the name of the Perl script being
executed). The interpolation is performed by Perl before the string
argument is passed to gettext() and will therefore depend on
the name of the script which can only be determined at runtime.
Consequently, it is almost impossible that a translation can be looked
up at runtime (except if, by accident, the interpolated string is found
in the message catalog).
The xgettext program will therefore terminate parsing with a fatal
error if it encounters a variable inside of an extracted string. In
general, this will happen for all kinds of string interpolations that
cannot be safely performed at compile time. If you absolutely know
what you are doing, you can always circumvent this behavior:
my $know_what_i_am_doing = "This is program $0!\n"; print gettext $know_what_i_am_doing;
Since the parser only recognizes strings and quote-like expressions, but not variables or other terms, the above construct will be accepted. You will have to find another way, however, to let your original string make it into your message catalog.
If invoked with the option --extract-all, resp. -a,
variable interpolation will be accepted. Rationale: You will
generally use this option in order to prepare your sources for
internationalization.
Please see the manual page ‘man perlop’ for details of strings and quote-like expressions that are subject to interpolation and those that are not. Safe interpolations (that will not lead to a fatal error) are:
\t (tab, HT, TAB), \n
(newline, NL), \r (return, CR), \f (form feed, FF),
\b (backspace, BS), \a (alarm, bell, BEL), and \e
(escape, ESC).
\033
use utf8 pragma.
\x1b
\x{263a}
use utf8 pragma.
\c[ (CTRL-[)
\N{LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C WITH CEDILLA}
use utf8 pragma.
The following escapes are considered partially safe:
\l lowercase next char
\u uppercase next char
\L lowercase till \E
\U uppercase till \E
\E end case modification
\Q quote non-word characters till \E
These escapes are only considered safe if the string consists of
ASCII characters only. Translation of characters outside the range
defined by ASCII is locale-dependent and can actually only be performed
at runtime; xgettext doesn’t do these locale-dependent translations
at extraction time.
Except for the modifier \Q, these translations, albeit valid,
are generally useless and only obfuscate your sources. If a
translation can be safely performed at compile time you can just as
well write what you mean.
Next: When To Use Parentheses, Previous: Invalid Uses Of String Interpolation, Up: Perl [Contents][Index]
Perl is often used to generate sources for other programming languages or arbitrary file formats. Web applications that output HTML code make a prominent example for such usage.
You will often come across situations where you want to intersperse code written in the target (programming) language with translatable messages, like in the following HTML example:
print gettext <<EOF;
<h1>My Homepage</h1>
<script language="JavaScript"><!--
for (i = 0; i < 100; ++i) {
alert ("Thank you so much for visiting my homepage!");
}
//--></script>
EOF
The parser will extract the entire here document, and it will appear entirely in the resulting PO file, including the JavaScript snippet embedded in the HTML code. If you exaggerate with constructs like the above, you will run the risk that the translators of your package will look out for a less challenging project. You should consider an alternative expression here:
print <<EOF;
<h1>$gettext{"My Homepage"}</h1>
<script language="JavaScript"><!--
for (i = 0; i < 100; ++i) {
alert ("$gettext{'Thank you so much for visiting my homepage!'}");
}
//--></script>
EOF
Only the translatable portions of the code will be extracted here, and the resulting PO file will begrudgingly improve in terms of readability.
You can interpolate hash lookups in all strings or quote-like expressions that are subject to interpolation (see the manual page ‘man perlop’ for details). Double interpolation is invalid, however:
# TRANSLATORS: Replace "the earth" with the name of your planet.
print gettext qq{Welcome to $gettext->{"the earth"}};
The qq-quoted string is recognized as an argument to xgettext in
the first place, and checked for invalid variable interpolation. The
dollar sign of hash-dereferencing will therefore terminate the parser
with an “invalid interpolation” error.
It is valid to interpolate hash lookups in regular expressions:
if ($var =~ /$gettext{"the earth"}/) {
print gettext "Match!\n";
}
s/$gettext{"U. S. A."}/$gettext{"U. S. A."} $gettext{"(dial +0)"}/g;
Next: How To Grok with Long Lines, Previous: Valid Uses Of String Interpolation, Up: Perl [Contents][Index]
In Perl, parentheses around function arguments are mostly optional.
xgettext will always assume that all
recognized keywords (except for hashes and hash references) are names
of properly prototyped functions, and will (hopefully) only require
parentheses where Perl itself requires them. All constructs in the
following example are therefore ok to use:
print gettext ("Hello World!\n");
print gettext "Hello World!\n";
print dgettext ($package => "Hello World!\n");
print dgettext $package, "Hello World!\n";
# The "fat comma" => turns the left-hand side argument into a
# single-quoted string!
print dgettext smellovision => "Hello World!\n";
# The following assignment only works with prototyped functions.
# Otherwise, the functions will act as "greedy" list operators and
# eat up all following arguments.
my $anonymous_hash = {
planet => gettext "earth",
cakes => ngettext "one cake", "several cakes", $n,
still => $works,
};
# The same without fat comma:
my $other_hash = {
'planet', gettext "earth",
'cakes', ngettext "one cake", "several cakes", $n,
'still', $works,
};
# Parentheses are only significant for the first argument.
print dngettext 'package', ("one cake", "several cakes", $n), $discarded;
Next: Bugs, Pitfalls, And Things That Do Not Work, Previous: When To Use Parentheses, Up: Perl [Contents][Index]
The necessity of long messages can often lead to a cumbersome or
unreadable coding style. Perl has several options that may prevent
you from writing unreadable code, and
xgettext does its best to do likewise. This is where the dot
operator (the string concatenation operator) may come in handy:
print gettext ("This is a very long"
. " message that is still"
. " readable, because"
. " it is split into"
. " multiple lines.\n");
Perl is smart enough to concatenate these constant string fragments
into one long string at compile time, and so is
xgettext. You will only find one long message in the resulting
POT file.
Note that the future Perl 6 will probably use the underscore
(‘_’) as the string concatenation operator, and the dot
(‘.’) for dereferencing. This new syntax is not yet supported by
xgettext.
If embedded newline characters are not an issue, or even desired, you may also insert newline characters inside quoted strings wherever you feel like it:
print gettext ("<em>In HTML output
embedded newlines are generally no
problem, since adjacent whitespace
is always rendered into a single
space character.</em>");
You may also consider to use here documents:
print gettext <<EOF; <em>In HTML output embedded newlines are generally no problem, since adjacent whitespace is always rendered into a single space character.</em> EOF
Please do not forget that the line breaks are real, i.e. they translate into newline characters that will consequently show up in the resulting POT file.
Previous: How To Grok with Long Lines, Up: Perl [Contents][Index]
The foregoing sections should have proven that
xgettext is quite smart in extracting translatable strings from
Perl sources. Yet, some more or less exotic constructs that could be
expected to work, actually do not work.
One of the more relevant limitations can be found in the implementation of variable interpolation inside quoted strings. Only simple hash lookups can be used there:
print <<EOF;
$gettext{"The dot operator"
. " does not work"
. "here!"}
Likewise, you cannot @{[ gettext ("interpolate function calls") ]}
inside quoted strings or quote-like expressions.
EOF
This is valid Perl code and will actually trigger invocations of the
gettext function at runtime. Yet, the Perl parser in
xgettext will fail to recognize the strings. A less obvious
example can be found in the interpolation of regular expressions:
s/<!--START_OF_WEEK-->/gettext ("Sunday")/e;
The modifier e will cause the substitution to be interpreted as
an evaluable statement. Consequently, at runtime the function
gettext() is called, but again, the parser fails to extract the
string “Sunday”. Use a temporary variable as a simple workaround if
you really happen to need this feature:
my $sunday = gettext "Sunday"; s/<!--START_OF_WEEK-->/$sunday/;
Hash slices would also be handy but are not recognized:
my @weekdays = @gettext{'Sunday', 'Monday', 'Tuesday', 'Wednesday',
'Thursday', 'Friday', 'Saturday'};
# Or even:
@weekdays = @gettext{qw (Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday
Friday Saturday) };
This is perfectly valid usage of the tied hash %gettext but the
strings are not recognized and therefore will not be extracted.
Another caveat of the current version is its rudimentary support for non-ASCII characters in identifiers. You may encounter serious problems if you use identifiers with characters outside the range of ’A’-’Z’, ’a’-’z’, ’0’-’9’ and the underscore ’_’.
Maybe some of these missing features will be implemented in future versions, but since you can always make do without them at minimal effort, these todos have very low priority.
A nasty problem are brace format strings that already contain braces as part of the normal text, for example the usage strings typically encountered in programs:
die "usage: $0 {OPTIONS} FILENAME...\n";
If you want to internationalize this code with Perl brace format strings, you will run into a problem:
die __x ("usage: {program} {OPTIONS} FILENAME...\n", program => $0);
Whereas ‘{program}’ is a placeholder, ‘{OPTIONS}’
is not and should probably be translated. Yet, there is no way to teach
the Perl parser in xgettext to recognize the first one, and leave
the other one alone.
There are two possible work-arounds for this problem. If you are
sure that your program will run under Perl 5.8.0 or newer (these
Perl versions handle positional parameters in printf()) or
if you are sure that the translator will not have to reorder the arguments
in her translation – for example if you have only one brace placeholder
in your string, or if it describes a syntax, like in this one –, you can
mark the string as no-perl-brace-format and use printf():
# xgettext: no-perl-brace-format
die sprintf ("usage: %s {OPTIONS} FILENAME...\n", $0);
If you want to use the more portable Perl brace format, you will have to do put placeholders in place of the literal braces:
die __x ("usage: {program} {[}OPTIONS{]} FILENAME...\n",
program => $0, '[' => '{', ']' => '}');
Perl brace format strings know no escaping mechanism. No matter how this
escaping mechanism looked like, it would either give the programmer a
hard time, make translating Perl brace format strings heavy-going, or
result in a performance penalty at runtime, when the format directives
get executed. Most of the time you will happily get along with
printf() for this special case.
Next: Pike, Previous: Perl, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
mod_php4, mod_php4-core, phpdoc
php
php, php3, php4
"abc", 'abc'
_("abc")
gettext, dgettext, dcgettext; starting with PHP 4.2.0
also ngettext, dngettext, dcngettext
textdomain function
bindtextdomain function
Programmer must call setlocale (LC_ALL, "")
—
use
xgettext
printf "%2\$d %1\$d"
On platforms without gettext, the functions are not available.
—
An example is available in the examples directory: hello-php.
Next: GNU Compiler Collection sources, Previous: PHP Hypertext Preprocessor, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
roxen
pike8.0 or pike7.8
pike
"abc"
—
gettext, dgettext, dcgettext
textdomain function
bindtextdomain function
setlocale function
import Locale.Gettext;
use
—
—
On platforms without gettext, the functions are not available.
—
Next: YCP - YaST2 scripting language, Previous: Pike, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
gcc
gcc
c, h.
"abc"
_("abc")
gettext, dgettext, dcgettext, ngettext,
dngettext, dcngettext
textdomain function
bindtextdomain function
Programmer must call setlocale (LC_ALL, "")
#include "intl.h"
Use
xgettext -k_
—
Uses autoconf macros
yes
Previous: GNU Compiler Collection sources, Up: Individual Programming Languages [Contents][Index]
libycp, libycp-devel, yast2-core, yast2-core-devel
—
ycp
"abc"
_("abc")
_() with 1 or 3 arguments
textdomain statement
—
—
—
use
xgettext
sformat "%2 %1"
fully portable
—
An example is available in the examples directory: hello-ycp.
Next: Concluding Remarks, Previous: Other Programming Languages, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
While the GNU gettext tools deal mainly with POT and PO files, they can also manipulate a couple of other data formats.
Next: Localized Data Formats, Up: Other Data Formats [Contents][Index]
Here is a list of other data formats which can be internationalized using GNU gettext.
Next: Resource String Table, Up: Internationalizable Data Formats [Contents][Index]
gettext
gettext
pot, po
xgettext
Next: Glade - GNOME user interface description, Previous: POT - Portable Object Template, Up: Internationalizable Data Formats [Contents][Index]
RST is the format of resource string table files of the Free Pascal compiler versions older than 3.0.0. RSJ is the new format of resource string table files, created by the Free Pascal compiler version 3.0.0 or newer.
fpk
fp-compiler
rst, rsj
xgettext, rstconv
Next: GSettings - GNOME user configuration schema, Previous: Resource String Table, Up: Internationalizable Data Formats [Contents][Index]
glade, libglade, glade2, libglade2, intltool
glade, libglade2-dev, intltool
glade, glade2, ui
xgettext, libglade-xgettext, xml-i18n-extract, intltool-extract
Next: AppData - freedesktop.org application description, Previous: Glade - GNOME user interface description, Up: Internationalizable Data Formats [Contents][Index]
glib2
libglib2.0-dev
gschema.xml
xgettext, intltool-extract
Next: Preparing Rules for XML Internationalization, Previous: GSettings - GNOME user configuration schema, Up: Internationalizable Data Formats [Contents][Index]
This file format is specified in https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/.
appdata-tools, appstream, libappstream-glib, libappstream-glib-builder
appdata-tools, appstream, libappstream-glib-dev
appdata.xml, metainfo.xml
xgettext, intltool-extract, itstool
Previous: AppData - freedesktop.org application description, Up: Internationalizable Data Formats [Contents][Index]
Marking translatable strings in an XML file is done through a separate
"rule" file, making use of the Internationalization Tag Set standard
(ITS, https://www.w3.org/TR/its20/). The currently supported ITS
data categories are: ‘Translate’, ‘Localization Note’,
‘Elements Within Text’, and ‘Preserve Space’. In addition to
them, xgettext also recognizes the following extended data
categories:
This data category associates msgctxt to the extracted text. In
the global rule, the contextRule element contains the following:
selector attribute. It contains an absolute selector
that selects the nodes to which this rule applies.
contextPointer attribute that contains a relative
selector pointing to a node that holds the msgctxt value.
textPointer attribute that contains a relative
selector pointing to a node that holds the msgid value.
This data category indicates whether the special XML characters
(<, >, &, ") are escaped with entity
reference. In the global rule, the escapeRule element contains
the following:
selector attribute. It contains an absolute selector
that selects the nodes to which this rule applies.
escape attribute with the value yes or no.
This data category extends the standard ‘Preserve Space’ data
category with the additional values ‘trim’ and ‘paragraph’.
‘trim’ means to remove the leading and trailing whitespaces of the
content, but not to normalize whitespaces in the middle.
‘paragraph’ means to normalize the content but keep the paragraph
boundaries. In the global
rule, the preserveSpaceRule element contains the following:
selector attribute. It contains an absolute selector
that selects the nodes to which this rule applies.
space attribute with the value default,
preserve, trim, or paragraph.
All those extended data categories can only be expressed with global
rules, and the rule elements have to have the
https://www.gnu.org/s/gettext/ns/its/extensions/1.0 namespace.
Given the following XML document in a file messages.xml:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<messages>
<message>
<p>A translatable string</p>
</message>
<message>
<p translatable="no">A non-translatable string</p>
</message>
</messages>
To extract the first text content ("A translatable string"), but not the second ("A non-translatable string"), the following ITS rules can be used:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<its:rules xmlns:its="http://www.w3.org/2005/11/its" version="1.0">
<its:translateRule selector="/messages" translate="no"/>
<its:translateRule selector="//message/p" translate="yes"/>
<!-- If 'p' has an attribute 'translatable' with the value 'no', then
the content is not translatable. -->
<its:translateRule selector="//message/p[@translatable = 'no']"
translate="no"/>
</its:rules>
‘xgettext’ needs another file called "locating rule" to associate an ITS rule with an XML file. If the above ITS file is saved as messages.its, the locating rule would look like:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<locatingRules>
<locatingRule name="Messages" pattern="*.xml">
<documentRule localName="messages" target="messages.its"/>
</locatingRule>
<locatingRule name="Messages" pattern="*.msg" target="messages.its"/>
</locatingRules>
The locatingRule element must have a pattern attribute,
which denotes either a literal file name or a wildcard pattern of the
XML file7. The locatingRule element can have child
documentRule element, which adds checks on the content of the XML
file.
The first rule matches any file with the .xml file extension, but it only applies to XML files whose root element is ‘<messages>’.
The second rule indicates that the same ITS rule file are also
applicable to any file with the .msg file extension. The
optional name attribute of locatingRule allows to choose
rules by name, typically with xgettext’s -L option.
The associated ITS rule file is indicated by the target attribute
of locatingRule or documentRule. If it is specified in a
documentRule element, the parent locatingRule shouldn’t
have the target attribute.
Locating rule files must have the .loc file extension. Both ITS
rule files and locating rule files must be installed in the
$prefix/share/gettext/its directory. Once those files are
properly installed, xgettext can extract translatable strings
from the matching XML files.
For XML, there are two use-cases of translated strings. One is the case where the translated strings are directly consumed by programs, and the other is the case where the translated strings are merged back to the original XML document. In the former case, special characters in the extracted strings shouldn’t be escaped, while they should in the latter case. To control wheter to escape special characters, the ‘Escape Special Characters’ data category can be used.
To merge the translations, the ‘msgfmt’ program can be used with
the option --xml. See Invoking the msgfmt Program, for more details
about how one calls the ‘msgfmt’ program. ‘msgfmt’’s
--xml option doesn’t perform character escaping, so translated
strings can have arbitrary XML constructs, such as elements for markup.
Previous: Internationalizable Data Formats, Up: Other Data Formats [Contents][Index]
Here is a list of file formats that contain localized data and that the GNU gettext tools can manipulate.
Next: Compiled Message Catalogs, Up: Localized Data Formats [Contents][Index]
These file formats can be used with all of the msg* tools and with
the xgettext program.
If you just want to convert among these formats, you can use the
msgcat program (with the appropriate option) or the xgettext
program.
Next: Java .properties, Up: Editable Message Catalogs [Contents][Index]
po
Next: NeXTstep/GNUstep .strings, Previous: PO - Portable Object, Up: Editable Message Catalogs [Contents][Index]
properties
Previous: Java .properties, Up: Editable Message Catalogs [Contents][Index]
strings
Next: Desktop Entry files, Previous: Editable Message Catalogs, Up: Localized Data Formats [Contents][Index]
These file formats can be created through msgfmt and converted back
to PO format through msgunfmt.
Next: Java ResourceBundle, Up: Compiled Message Catalogs [Contents][Index]
mo
See section The Format of GNU MO Files for details.
Next: C# Satellite Assembly, Previous: MO - Machine Object, Up: Compiled Message Catalogs [Contents][Index]
class
For more information, see the section Java and the examples
hello-java, hello-java-awt, hello-java-swing.
Next: C# Resource, Previous: Java ResourceBundle, Up: Compiled Message Catalogs [Contents][Index]
dll
For more information, see the section C#.
Next: Tcl message catalog, Previous: C# Satellite Assembly, Up: Compiled Message Catalogs [Contents][Index]
resources
For more information, see the section C#.
Next: Qt message catalog, Previous: C# Resource, Up: Compiled Message Catalogs [Contents][Index]
msg
For more information, see the section Tcl - Tk’s scripting language and the examples
hello-tcl, hello-tcl-tk.
Previous: Tcl message catalog, Up: Compiled Message Catalogs [Contents][Index]
qm
For more information, see the examples hello-c++-qt and
hello-c++-kde.
Next: XML files, Previous: Compiled Message Catalogs, Up: Localized Data Formats [Contents][Index]
The programmer produces a desktop entry file template with only the
English strings. These strings get included in the POT file, by way of
xgettext (usually by listing the template in po/POTFILES.in).
The translators produce PO files, one for each language. Finally, an
msgfmt --desktop invocation collects all the translations in the
desktop entry file.
For more information, see the example hello-c-gnome3.
Up: Desktop Entry files [Contents][Index]
Icons are generally locale dependent, for the following reasons:
However, icons are not covered by GNU gettext localization, because
Desktop Entry files may contain an ‘Icon’ property, and this property is localizable. If a translator wishes to localize an icon, she should do so by bypassing the normal workflow with PO files:
Icon[locale]=icon_file_name
to the template file.
This line remains in place when this template file is merged with the
translators’ PO files, through msgfmt.
Previous: Desktop Entry files, Up: Localized Data Formats [Contents][Index]
See the section Preparing Rules for XML Internationalization and
Invoking the msgfmt Program, subsection “XML mode operations”.
Next: Language Codes, Previous: Other Data Formats, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
We would like to conclude this GNU gettext manual by presenting
an history of the Translation Project so far. We finally give
a few pointers for those who want to do further research or readings
about Native Language Support matters.
Next: Notes on the Free Translation Project, Up: Concluding Remarks [Contents][Index]
gettextInternationalization concerns and algorithms have been informally
and casually discussed for years in GNU, sometimes around GNU
libc, maybe around the incoming Hurd, or otherwise
(nobody clearly remembers). And even then, when the work started for
real, this was somewhat independently of these previous discussions.
This all began in July 1994, when Patrick D’Cruze had the idea and
initiative of internationalizing version 3.9.2 of GNU fileutils.
He then asked Jim Meyering, the maintainer, how to get those changes
folded into an official release. That first draft was full of
#ifdefs and somewhat disconcerting, and Jim wanted to find
nicer ways. Patrick and Jim shared some tries and experimentations
in this area. Then, feeling that this might eventually have a deeper
impact on GNU, Jim wanted to know what standards were, and contacted
Richard Stallman, who very quickly and verbally described an overall
design for what was meant to become glocale, at that time.
Jim implemented glocale and got a lot of exhausting feedback
from Patrick and Richard, of course, but also from Mitchum DSouza
(who wrote a catgets-like package), Roland McGrath, maybe David
MacKenzie, François Pinard, and Paul Eggert, all pushing and
pulling in various directions, not always compatible, to the extent
that after a couple of test releases, glocale was torn apart.
In particular, Paul Eggert – always keeping an eye on developments
in Solaris – advocated the use of the gettext API over
glocale’s catgets-based API.
While Jim took some distance and time and became dad for a second
time, Roland wanted to get GNU libc internationalized, and
got Ulrich Drepper involved in that project. Instead of starting
from glocale, Ulrich rewrote something from scratch, but
more conforming to the set of guidelines who emerged out of the
glocale effort. Then, Ulrich got people from the previous
forum to involve themselves into this new project, and the switch
from glocale to what was first named msgutils, renamed
nlsutils, and later gettext, became officially accepted
by Richard in May 1995 or so.
Let’s summarize by saying that Ulrich Drepper wrote GNU gettext
in April 1995. The first official release of the package, including
PO mode, occurred in July 1995, and was numbered 0.7. Other people
contributed to the effort by providing a discussion forum around
Ulrich, writing little pieces of code, or testing. These are quoted
in the THANKS file which comes with the GNU gettext
distribution.
While this was being done, François adapted half a dozen of
GNU packages to glocale first, then later to gettext,
putting them in pretest, so providing along the way an effective
user environment for fine tuning the evolving tools. He also took
the responsibility of organizing and coordinating the Translation
Project. After nearly a year of informal exchanges between people from
many countries, translator teams started to exist in May 1995, through
the creation and support by Patrick D’Cruze of twenty unmoderated
mailing lists for that many native languages, and two moderated
lists: one for reaching all teams at once, the other for reaching
all willing maintainers of internationalized free software packages.
François also wrote PO mode in June 1995 with the collaboration
of Greg McGary, as a kind of contribution to Ulrich’s package.
He also gave a hand with the GNU gettext Texinfo manual.
In 1997, Ulrich Drepper released the GNU libc 2.0, which included the
gettext, textdomain and bindtextdomain functions.
In 2000, Ulrich Drepper added plural form handling (the ngettext
function) to GNU libc. Later, in 2001, he released GNU libc 2.2.x,
which is the first free C library with full internationalization support.
Ulrich being quite busy in his role of General Maintainer of GNU libc,
he handed over the GNU gettext maintenance to Bruno Haible in
2000. Bruno added the plural form handling to the tools as well, added
support for UTF-8 and CJK locales, and wrote a few new tools for
manipulating PO files.
Next: Related Readings, Previous: History of GNU gettext, Up: Concluding Remarks [Contents][Index]
This section contains the text that was, for a long time, distributed
as a file named ABOUT-NLS.
NOTE: This documentation section is outdated. It it included here for historical purposes only.
Free software is going international! The Free Translation Project is a way to get maintainers of free software, translators, and users all together, so that free software will gradually become able to speak many languages. A few packages already provide translations for their messages.
If you found this ABOUT-NLS file inside a distribution, you
may assume that the distributed package does use GNU gettext
internally, itself available at your nearest GNU archive site. But you
do not need to install GNU gettext prior to configuring,
installing or using this package with messages translated.
Installers will find here some useful hints. These notes also explain how users should proceed for getting the programs to use the available translations. They tell how people wanting to contribute and work on translations can contact the appropriate team.
gettext in new packagesNext: Using This Package, Up: Notes on the Free Translation Project [Contents][Index]
Some packages are localizable when properly installed; the
programs they contain can be made to speak your own native language.
Most such packages use GNU gettext. Other packages have their
own ways to internationalization, predating GNU gettext.
By default, this package will be installed to allow translation of
messages. It will automatically detect whether the system already
provides the GNU gettext functions. Installers may use special
options at configuration time for changing the default behaviour. The
command:
./configure --disable-nls
will totally disable translation of messages.
When you already have GNU gettext installed on your system and
run configure without an option for your new package, configure
will probably detect the previously built and installed libintl
library and will decide to use it. If not, you may have to to use the
‘--with-libintl-prefix’ option to tell configure where to
look for it.
Internationalized packages usually have many po/ll.po
files, where ll gives an ISO 639 two-letter code
identifying the language. Unless translations have been forbidden
at configure time by using the ‘--disable-nls’ switch,
all available translations are installed together with the package.
However, the environment variable LINGUAS may be set, prior
to configuration, to limit the installed set. LINGUAS should
then contain a space separated list of two-letter codes, stating
which languages are allowed.
Next: Translating Teams, Previous: INSTALL Matters, Up: Notes on the Free Translation Project [Contents][Index]
As a user, if your language has been installed for this package, you
only have to set the LANG environment variable to the appropriate
‘ll_CC’ combination. If you happen to have the LC_ALL
or some other LC_xxx environment variables set, you should unset them
before setting LANG, otherwise the setting of LANG will not
have the desired effect. Here ‘ll’ is an
ISO 639 two-letter language code, and ‘CC’ is an
ISO 3166 two-letter country code. For example, let’s suppose that you
speak German and live in Germany. At the shell prompt, merely execute
‘setenv LANG de_DE’ (in csh),
‘export LANG; LANG=de_DE’ (in sh) or
‘export LANG=de_DE’ (in bash). This can be done from your
.login or .profile file, once and for all.
You might think that the country code specification is redundant. But in fact, some languages have dialects in different countries. For example, ‘de_AT’ is used for Austria, and ‘pt_BR’ for Brazil. The country code serves to distinguish the dialects.
The locale naming convention of ‘ll_CC’, with ‘ll’ denoting the language and ‘CC’ denoting the country, is the one use on systems based on GNU libc. On other systems, some variations of this scheme are used, such as ‘ll’ or ‘ll_CC.encoding’. You can get the list of locales supported by your system for your language by running the command ‘locale -a | grep '^ll'’.
Not all programs have translations for all languages. By default, an
English message is shown in place of a nonexistent translation. If you
understand other languages, you can set up a priority list of languages.
This is done through a different environment variable, called
LANGUAGE. GNU gettext gives preference to LANGUAGE
over LANG for the purpose of message handling, but you still
need to have LANG set to the primary language; this is required
by other parts of the system libraries.
For example, some Swedish users who would rather read translations in
German than English for when Swedish is not available, set LANGUAGE
to ‘sv:de’ while leaving LANG to ‘sv_SE’.
Special advice for Norwegian users: The language code for Norwegian
bokmål changed from ‘no’ to ‘nb’ recently (in 2003).
During the transition period, while some message catalogs for this language
are installed under ‘nb’ and some older ones under ‘no’, it’s
recommended for Norwegian users to set LANGUAGE to ‘nb:no’ so that
both newer and older translations are used.
In the LANGUAGE environment variable, but not in the LANG
environment variable, ‘ll_CC’ combinations can be
abbreviated as ‘ll’ to denote the language’s main dialect.
For example, ‘de’ is equivalent to ‘de_DE’ (German as spoken in
Germany), and ‘pt’ to ‘pt_PT’ (Portuguese as spoken in Portugal)
in this context.
Next: Available Packages, Previous: Using This Package, Up: Notes on the Free Translation Project [Contents][Index]
For the Free Translation Project to be a success, we need interested people who like their own language and write it well, and who are also able to synergize with other translators speaking the same language. Each translation team has its own mailing list. The up-to-date list of teams can be found at the Free Translation Project’s homepage, https://translationproject.org/, in the "Teams" area.
If you’d like to volunteer to work at translating messages, you should become a member of the translating team for your own language. The subscribing address is not the same as the list itself, it has ‘-request’ appended. For example, speakers of Swedish can send a message to sv-request@li.org, having this message body:
subscribe
Keep in mind that team members are expected to participate actively in translations, or at solving translational difficulties, rather than merely lurking around. If your team does not exist yet and you want to start one, or if you are unsure about what to do or how to get started, please write to coordinator@translationproject.org to reach the coordinator for all translator teams.
The English team is special. It works at improving and uniformizing the terminology in use. Proven linguistic skills are praised more than programming skills, here.
Next: Using gettext in new packages, Previous: Translating Teams, Up: Notes on the Free Translation Project [Contents][Index]
Languages are not equally supported in all packages. The following matrix shows the current state of internationalization, as of June 2023. The matrix shows, in regard of each package, for which languages PO files have been submitted to translation coordination, with a translation percentage of at least 50%.
Ready PO files ab af an ar ast be bg bn bn_IN ca ckb crh cs da
+--------------------------------------------------+
a2ps | [] |
anubis | [] |
aspell | [] [] [] [] |
bash | [] [] [] |
beebase | |
bfd | |
binutils | |
bison | [] |
bison-runtime | [] [] [] [] |
buzztrax | [] [] |
ccd2cue | [] |
ccide | [] |
cflow | |
clisp | [] |
coreutils | [] [] [] [] |
cpio | [] |
cppi | [] |
cpplib | [] [] |
cryptsetup | [] [] |
datamash | [] |
denemo | [] [] [] |
dfarc | [] [] |
dialog | [] [] [] [] [] |
dico | [] |
diffutils | [] [] [] |
dink | [] [] |
direvent | [] |
doodle | [] [] |
dos2unix | [] [] |
dos2unix-man | |
e2fsprogs | [] [] [] |
enscript | [] [] |
exif | [] [] [] |
fetchmail | [] [] [] |
findutils | [] [] [] [] |
flex | [] [] [] |
freedink | [] [] [] |
fusionforge | |
gas | |
gawk | [] [] |
gcal | [] [] |
gcc | |
gdbm | [] |
gettext-examples | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gettext-runtime | [] [] [] [] [] |
gettext-tools | [] [] [] |
gnubik | [] [] |
gnuchess | [] |
gnucobol | |
gnulib | [] [] [] |
gnunet | |
gnunet-gtk | |
gnutls | [] |
gold | |
gphoto2 | [] [] |
gprof | [] [] |
grep | [] [] [] [] [] |
grip | [] [] [] [] |
grub | [] [] [] |
gsasl | [] |
gss | [] |
gst-plugins-bad | [] [] [] [] |
gst-plugins-base | [] [] [] [] |
gst-plugins-good | [] [] [] [] |
gst-plugins-ugly | [] [] [] [] [] |
gstreamer | [] [] [] [] [] |
gtick | [] [] |
gtkam | [] [] [] |
gtkspell | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gutenprint | [] [] |
hello | [] |
help2man | [] |
help2man-texi | |
idutils | [] |
kbd | [] |
klavaro | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
ld | |
libc | [] [] [] [] |
libexif | [] |
libextractor | [] |
libgphoto2 | [] [] |
libgphoto2_port | [] [] |
libiconv | [] [] [] [] |
libidn | [] [] |
libidn2 | [] [] |
lilypond | [] [] [] |
lordsawar | [] [] |
lynx | [] [] [] |
m4 | [] |
mailfromd | [] |
mailutils | |
make | [] [] [] |
man-db | [] [] [] [] |
man-db-manpages | |
meritous | [] |
midi-instruments | [] [] [] [] |
minicom | [] [] |
mpop | |
msmtp | |
nano | [] [] [] |
opcodes | |
parted | [] [] |
pies | |
pnmixer | [] |
procps-ng | |
procps-ng-man | |
psmisc | [] [] |
psmisc-man | |
pspp | [] [] |
pyspread | [] |
radius | [] |
recode | [] [] [] [] |
recutils | |
rush | [] |
sarg | [] |
savane | |
sed | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
sharutils | [] |
shepherd | |
shishi | |
skribilo | [] |
solfege | [] [] [] |
solfege-manual | [] |
spotmachine | [] |
sudo | [] [] [] [] |
sudoers | [] [] |
sysstat | [] [] |
tar | [] [] [] [] |
texinfo | [] [] [] |
texinfo_document | [] [] |
tigervnc | [] [] |
tin | [] |
tin-man | |
trader | [] |
util-linux | [] [] |
util-linux-man | |
ve | |
vmm | |
vorbis-tools | [] [] |
wastesedge | [] |
wcd | [] |
wcd-man | |
wdiff | [] [] [] |
wget | [] [] |
wget2 | |
wyslij-po | [] |
xboard | [] |
xdg-user-dirs | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
xkeyboard-config | [] [] [] [] [] |
xz | [] [] |
xz-man | |
+--------------------------------------------------+
ab af an ar ast be bg bn bn_IN ca ckb crh cs da
1 3 2 6 15 11 30 1 1 52 1 1 64 100
de el en en_GB eo es et eu fa fi fr fur ga gd
+--------------------------------------------------+
a2ps | [] [] [] |
anubis | [] [] [] [] |
aspell | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
bash | [] [] [] [] [] |
beebase | [] [] [] |
bfd | [] |
binutils | [] |
bison | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
bison-runtime | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
buzztrax | [] [] [] [] |
ccd2cue | [] [] [] [] |
ccide | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
cflow | [] [] [] |
clisp | [] [] [] [] |
coreutils | [] [] [] [] |
cpio | [] [] [] [] [] |
cppi | [] [] [] [] [] |
cpplib | [] [] [] [] [] |
cryptsetup | [] [] [] |
datamash | [] [] [] [] |
denemo | |
dfarc | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
dialog | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
dico | [] [] [] [] |
diffutils | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
dink | [] [] [] [] [] |
direvent | [] [] [] [] |
doodle | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
dos2unix | [] [] [] [] [] |
dos2unix-man | [] [] [] |
e2fsprogs | [] [] [] |
enscript | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
exif | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
fetchmail | () [] [] [] [] [] |
findutils | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
flex | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
freedink | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
fusionforge | [] [] [] |
gas | [] [] [] |
gawk | [] [] [] [] |
gcal | [] [] [] |
gcc | [] [] |
gdbm | [] [] [] [] |
gettext-examples | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gettext-runtime | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gettext-tools | [] [] [] [] |
gnubik | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gnuchess | [] [] [] [] |
gnucobol | [] |
gnulib | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gnunet | [] |
gnunet-gtk | [] [] |
gnutls | [] [] [] [] [] |
gold | [] [] [] |
gphoto2 | () [] [] |
gprof | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
grep | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
grip | [] [] [] [] [] |
grub | [] [] [] [] |
gsasl | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gss | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gst-plugins-bad | [] [] [] [] [] |
gst-plugins-base | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gst-plugins-good | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gst-plugins-ugly | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gstreamer | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gtick | () [] [] [] [] [] |
gtkam | () [] [] [] [] |
gtkspell | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gutenprint | [] [] [] |
hello | [] [] [] [] |
help2man | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
help2man-texi | [] [] [] |
idutils | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
kbd | [] [] [] [] [] |
klavaro | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
ld | [] [] |
libc | [] [] [] [] |
libexif | [] [] [] |
libextractor | [] [] [] |
libgphoto2 | () [] [] |
libgphoto2_port | () [] [] [] [] [] |
libiconv | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
libidn | [] [] [] [] [] |
libidn2 | [] [] [] [] [] |
lilypond | [] [] [] [] |
lordsawar | [] [] |
lynx | [] [] [] [] [] |
m4 | [] [] [] |
mailfromd | [] |
mailutils | [] [] [] [] |
make | [] [] [] [] [] |
man-db | [] [] [] [] |
man-db-manpages | [] [] [] |
meritous | [] |
midi-instruments | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
minicom | [] [] [] [] |
mpop | [] [] [] [] |
msmtp | [] [] [] |
nano | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
opcodes | [] [] [] |
parted | [] [] [] [] |
pies | [] [] [] |
pnmixer | [] [] |
procps-ng | [] [] [] |
procps-ng-man | [] |
psmisc | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
psmisc-man | [] [] |
pspp | [] [] [] [] |
pyspread | [] [] |
radius | [] [] |
recode | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
recutils | [] [] [] |
rush | [] [] [] |
sarg | [] [] [] |
savane | [] [] |
sed | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
sharutils | [] [] [] [] |
shepherd | [] |
shishi | [] [] [] |
skribilo | [] [] [] [] |
solfege | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
solfege-manual | [] [] [] [] [] |
spotmachine | [] [] [] [] |
sudo | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
sudoers | [] [] [] [] |
sysstat | [] [] [] [] [] |
tar | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
texinfo | [] [] [] [] |
texinfo_document | [] [] [] [] [] |
tigervnc | [] [] [] [] [] |
tin | [] [] [] |
tin-man | [] [] |
trader | [] [] [] [] [] |
util-linux | [] [] [] |
util-linux-man | [] [] |
ve | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
vmm | |
vorbis-tools | [] [] [] [] |
wastesedge | [] |
wcd | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
wcd-man | [] [] |
wdiff | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
wget | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
wget2 | [] [] [] |
wyslij-po | [] [] [] [] [] |
xboard | [] [] [] |
xdg-user-dirs | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
xkeyboard-config | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
xz | [] [] [] [] [] |
xz-man | [] [] |
+--------------------------------------------------+
de el en en_GB eo es et eu fa fi fr fur ga gd
130 22 1 5 83 119 19 8 5 78 141 26 26 2
gl gu he hi hr hu hy id is it ja ka kk kn ko ku
+-------------------------------------------------+
a2ps | [] [] |
anubis | [] [] [] [] |
aspell | [] [] [] [] |
bash | [] [] [] [] [] |
beebase | () |
bfd | |
binutils | |
bison | [] |
bison-runtime | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
buzztrax | |
ccd2cue | [] |
ccide | [] [] [] |
cflow | |
clisp | |
coreutils | [] [] [] [] |
cpio | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
cppi | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
cpplib | [] [] |
cryptsetup | [] [] |
datamash | |
denemo | |
dfarc | [] [] [] |
dialog | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
dico | |
diffutils | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
dink | [] |
direvent | [] |
doodle | [] |
dos2unix | [] [] [] [] |
dos2unix-man | [] |
e2fsprogs | [] |
enscript | [] [] |
exif | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
fetchmail | [] [] [] |
findutils | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
flex | |
freedink | [] [] [] [] |
fusionforge | |
gas | [] |
gawk | [] () [] |
gcal | |
gcc | |
gdbm | |
gettext-examples | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gettext-runtime | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gettext-tools | [] [] [] [] [] |
gnubik | [] [] [] |
gnuchess | [] |
gnucobol | |
gnulib | [] [] [] [] |
gnunet | |
gnunet-gtk | |
gnutls | [] [] |
gold | |
gphoto2 | [] [] [] [] [] |
gprof | [] [] [] [] |
grep | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
grip | [] [] [] [] |
grub | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gsasl | [] [] [] [] |
gss | [] [] [] [] [] |
gst-plugins-bad | [] [] [] [] [] |
gst-plugins-base | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gst-plugins-good | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gst-plugins-ugly | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gstreamer | [] [] [] [] [] |
gtick | [] [] [] [] |
gtkam | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gtkspell | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gutenprint | [] [] [] [] [] |
hello | [] [] |
help2man | [] [] [] [] |
help2man-texi | |
idutils | [] [] [] |
kbd | |
klavaro | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
ld | |
libc | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
libexif | [] |
libextractor | |
libgphoto2 | |
libgphoto2_port | [] [] [] |
libiconv | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
libidn | [] [] [] [] [] |
libidn2 | [] [] [] [] |
lilypond | [] [] |
lordsawar | [] |
lynx | [] [] [] [] |
m4 | [] [] |
mailfromd | |
mailutils | |
make | [] [] [] [] [] |
man-db | [] [] [] |
man-db-manpages | [] [] |
meritous | |
midi-instruments | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
minicom | [] [] [] [] [] |
mpop | |
msmtp | |
nano | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
opcodes | |
parted | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
pies | |
pnmixer | [] [] |
procps-ng | [] |
procps-ng-man | |
psmisc | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
psmisc-man | [] [] |
pspp | [] [] |
pyspread | |
radius | [] |
recode | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
recutils | |
rush | |
sarg | |
savane | [] |
sed | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
sharutils | |
shepherd | |
shishi | |
skribilo | [] |
solfege | [] [] |
solfege-manual | |
spotmachine | |
sudo | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
sudoers | [] [] [] [] |
sysstat | [] [] [] [] [] |
tar | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
texinfo | [] [] [] |
texinfo_document | [] [] [] |
tigervnc | [] [] [] [] |
tin | |
tin-man | |
trader | [] [] |
util-linux | [] [] [] |
util-linux-man | |
ve | [] [] |
vmm | |
vorbis-tools | [] [] [] |
wastesedge | [] |
wcd | |
wcd-man | |
wdiff | [] [] [] |
wget | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
wget2 | [] [] |
wyslij-po | [] [] [] [] |
xboard | |
xdg-user-dirs | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
xkeyboard-config | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
xz | [] [] [] [] |
xz-man | [] |
+-------------------------------------------------+
gl gu he hi hr hu hy id is it ja ka kk kn ko ku
30 1 8 1 59 62 2 57 7 67 48 39 2 1 43 3
ky lg lt lv mk ml mn mr ms mt nb ne nl nn or pa
+-------------------------------------------------+
a2ps | [] [] [] |
anubis | [] [] [] |
aspell | [] [] |
bash | [] [] |
beebase | [] |
bfd | |
binutils | |
bison | [] |
bison-runtime | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
buzztrax | |
ccd2cue | |
ccide | [] [] |
cflow | |
clisp | [] |
coreutils | [] [] |
cpio | [] |
cppi | |
cpplib | [] |
cryptsetup | |
datamash | [] [] |
denemo | [] |
dfarc | [] [] |
dialog | [] [] [] [] [] |
dico | |
diffutils | [] [] [] [] |
dink | [] |
direvent | [] |
doodle | [] |
dos2unix | [] [] |
dos2unix-man | [] |
e2fsprogs | [] |
enscript | [] |
exif | [] [] [] |
fetchmail | [] |
findutils | [] [] |
flex | [] |
freedink | [] [] |
fusionforge | |
gas | |
gawk | [] |
gcal | |
gcc | |
gdbm | |
gettext-examples | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gettext-runtime | [] [] [] |
gettext-tools | |
gnubik | [] [] |
gnuchess | [] [] |
gnucobol | |
gnulib | [] |
gnunet | |
gnunet-gtk | |
gnutls | [] [] |
gold | |
gphoto2 | [] |
gprof | [] [] |
grep | [] [] |
grip | [] [] |
grub | [] [] [] |
gsasl | [] |
gss | |
gst-plugins-bad | [] [] [] |
gst-plugins-base | [] [] [] |
gst-plugins-good | [] [] [] |
gst-plugins-ugly | [] [] [] [] [] |
gstreamer | [] [] [] |
gtick | [] [] |
gtkam | [] [] [] |
gtkspell | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gutenprint | [] |
hello | [] [] |
help2man | [] |
help2man-texi | |
idutils | [] [] |
kbd | |
klavaro | [] [] [] |
ld | |
libc | [] |
libexif | [] |
libextractor | [] |
libgphoto2 | [] |
libgphoto2_port | [] |
libiconv | [] [] |
libidn | [] |
libidn2 | [] |
lilypond | [] |
lordsawar | |
lynx | [] |
m4 | [] |
mailfromd | |
mailutils | |
make | [] |
man-db | [] |
man-db-manpages | |
meritous | |
midi-instruments | [] [] [] [] [] |
minicom | [] |
mpop | |
msmtp | |
nano | [] [] [] |
opcodes | |
parted | [] |
pies | |
pnmixer | [] |
procps-ng | |
procps-ng-man | |
psmisc | [] |
psmisc-man | |
pspp | [] |
pyspread | [] |
radius | [] |
recode | [] [] |
recutils | [] |
rush | [] |
sarg | |
savane | |
sed | [] [] |
sharutils | [] |
shepherd | |
shishi | |
skribilo | |
solfege | [] [] |
solfege-manual | [] |
spotmachine | [] |
sudo | [] [] |
sudoers | [] |
sysstat | [] [] |
tar | [] [] [] |
texinfo | [] [] |
texinfo_document | [] |
tigervnc | |
tin | |
tin-man | |
trader | [] |
util-linux | [] |
util-linux-man | |
ve | [] |
vmm | |
vorbis-tools | [] |
wastesedge | [] |
wcd | [] |
wcd-man | [] |
wdiff | [] [] [] |
wget | [] [] |
wget2 | |
wyslij-po | [] [] |
xboard | [] |
xdg-user-dirs | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
xkeyboard-config | [] [] |
xz | |
xz-man | |
+-------------------------------------------------+
ky lg lt lv mk ml mn mr ms mt nb ne nl nn or pa
5 1 9 12 2 1 3 1 15 2 44 1 98 5 1 3
pl pt pt_BR ro ru rw sk sl sq sr sv sw ta te
+-------------------------------------------------+
a2ps | [] [] [] [] [] |
anubis | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
aspell | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
bash | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
beebase | [] |
bfd | [] [] [] [] |
binutils | [] [] [] [] [] |
bison | [] [] [] [] [] |
bison-runtime | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
buzztrax | [] [] [] |
ccd2cue | [] [] [] [] |
ccide | [] [] [] [] [] |
cflow | [] [] [] [] [] |
clisp | [] [] [] |
coreutils | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
cpio | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
cppi | [] [] [] [] [] |
cpplib | [] [] [] [] [] |
cryptsetup | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
datamash | [] [] [] [] |
denemo | |
dfarc | [] [] [] [] [] |
dialog | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
dico | [] [] [] [] |
diffutils | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
dink | [] |
direvent | [] [] [] [] [] |
doodle | [] [] [] [] [] |
dos2unix | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
dos2unix-man | [] [] [] [] [] |
e2fsprogs | [] [] [] [] |
enscript | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
exif | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
fetchmail | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
findutils | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
flex | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
freedink | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
fusionforge | |
gas | [] [] |
gawk | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gcal | [] [] |
gcc | [] [] |
gdbm | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gettext-examples | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gettext-runtime | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gettext-tools | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gnubik | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gnuchess | [] [] [] [] |
gnucobol | [] |
gnulib | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gnunet | [] |
gnunet-gtk | [] |
gnutls | [] [] [] [] [] |
gold | [] [] |
gphoto2 | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gprof | [] [] [] [] [] |
grep | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
grip | [] [] [] [] [] |
grub | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gsasl | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gss | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gst-plugins-bad | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gst-plugins-base | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gst-plugins-good | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gst-plugins-ugly | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gstreamer | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gtick | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gtkam | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gtkspell | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
gutenprint | [] [] [] [] |
hello | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
help2man | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
help2man-texi | [] [] [] [] [] |
idutils | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
kbd | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
klavaro | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
ld | [] [] [] |
libc | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
libexif | [] [] [] [] |
libextractor | [] [] [] [] |
libgphoto2 | [] [] |
libgphoto2_port | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
libiconv | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
libidn | [] [] [] [] [] |
libidn2 | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
lilypond | [] |
lordsawar | [] [] |
lynx | [] [] [] |
m4 | [] [] [] [] |
mailfromd | [] [] [] |
mailutils | [] [] [] [] |
make | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
man-db | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
man-db-manpages | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
meritous | [] [] [] |
midi-instruments | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
minicom | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
mpop | [] [] [] [] |
msmtp | [] [] [] [] |
nano | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
opcodes | [] [] [] [] |
parted | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
pies | [] [] [] |
pnmixer | [] [] () [] [] |
procps-ng | [] [] [] [] |
procps-ng-man | [] [] |
psmisc | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
psmisc-man | [] [] [] [] [] |
pspp | [] |
pyspread | [] [] |
radius | [] [] [] |
recode | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
recutils | [] [] [] |
rush | [] [] [] [] |
sarg | [] [] [] |
savane | [] () |
sed | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
sharutils | [] [] [] [] [] |
shepherd | [] [] [] |
shishi | [] [] [] |
skribilo | [] [] [] |
solfege | [] [] [] [] [] |
solfege-manual | [] [] |
spotmachine | [] [] [] [] |
sudo | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
sudoers | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
sysstat | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
tar | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
texinfo | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
texinfo_document | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
tigervnc | [] [] [] [] |
tin | [] |
tin-man | |
trader | [] [] [] [] |
util-linux | [] [] [] [] [] |
util-linux-man | [] |
ve | [] [] [] [] [] |
vmm | [] |
vorbis-tools | [] [] [] [] [] |
wastesedge | [] [] |
wcd | [] [] [] [] |
wcd-man | [] [] [] [] |
wdiff | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
wget | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
wget2 | [] [] [] [] [] |
wyslij-po | [] [] [] [] [] |
xboard | [] [] [] [] |
xdg-user-dirs | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
xkeyboard-config | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] |
xz | [] [] [] [] [] [] |
xz-man | [] [] |
+-------------------------------------------------+
pl pt pt_BR ro ru rw sk sl sq sr sv sw ta te
99 45 113 105 87 0 34 30 11 131 126 1 7 1
tg th tr uk ur vi wa wo zh_CN zh_HK zh_TW
+--------------------------------------------+
a2ps | [] | 15
anubis | [] [] [] | 21
aspell | [] [] [] [] | 32
bash | [] [] [] [] [] | 26
beebase | [] | 6
bfd | [] | 6
binutils | [] | 7
bison | [] [] | 17
bison-runtime | [] [] [] [] [] [] | 41
buzztrax | [] [] | 11
ccd2cue | [] [] [] [] | 14
ccide | [] [] [] | 20
cflow | [] | 9
clisp | | 12
coreutils | [] [] [] [] [] | 27
cpio | [] [] [] [] | 24
cppi | [] [] [] | 20
cpplib | [] [] [] [] [] | 20
cryptsetup | [] | 14
datamash | [] | 12
denemo | [] [] [] | 7
dfarc | [] | 19
dialog | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] | 48
dico | [] | 10
diffutils | [] [] [] [] [] | 32
dink | [] | 11
direvent | [] [] | 14
doodle | [] [] [] | 18
dos2unix | [] [] [] [] | 23
dos2unix-man | [] [] | 12
e2fsprogs | [] [] [] | 15
enscript | [] [] [] | 22
exif | [] [] [] [] | 33
fetchmail | [] [] [] | 21
findutils | [] [] [] [] | 31
flex | [] [] [] [] [] | 22
freedink | [] [] | 26
fusionforge | | 3
gas | [] | 7
gawk | [] [] [] | 18
gcal | [] [] | 9
gcc | | 4
gdbm | [] [] | 13
gettext-examples | [] [] [] [] [] [] | 44
gettext-runtime | [] [] [] [] [] | 34
gettext-tools | [] [] [] [] [] | 26
gnubik | [] [] [] | 22
gnuchess | [] [] [] | 15
gnucobol | | 2
gnulib | [] [] [] [] | 26
gnunet | | 2
gnunet-gtk | | 3
gnutls | [] [] [] | 18
gold | [] | 6
gphoto2 | [] [] [] [] | 20
gprof | [] [] [] | 22
grep | [] [] [] [] [] [] | 38
grip | [] [] [] [] [] | 25
grub | [] [] [] [] | 28
gsasl | [] [] [] | 21
gss | [] [] | 20
gst-plugins-bad | [] [] [] [] [] | 29
gst-plugins-base | [] [] [] [] | 32
gst-plugins-good | [] [] [] [] [] | 34
gst-plugins-ugly | [] [] [] [] [] | 40
gstreamer | [] [] [] [] [] | 34
gtick | [] [] [] | 23
gtkam | [] [] [] | 26
gtkspell | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] | 51
gutenprint | [] [] [] | 18
hello | [] [] | 18
help2man | [] [] [] | 21
help2man-texi | [] | 9
idutils | [] [] [] | 21
kbd | [] [] | 15
klavaro | [] [] [] [] [] [] | 35
ld | [] | 6
libc | [] [] [] [] [] | 28
libexif | [] [] | 12
libextractor | [] [] | 11
libgphoto2 | [] [] | 9
libgphoto2_port | [] [] [] [] | 22
libiconv | [] [] [] [] [] | 34
libidn | [] [] [] | 21
libidn2 | [] [] | 20
lilypond | [] | 12
lordsawar | [] | 8
lynx | [] [] [] | 19
m4 | [] [] | 13
mailfromd | [] [] | 7
mailutils | [] [] | 10
make | [] [] [] [] | 25
man-db | [] [] [] [] | 23
man-db-manpages | [] [] | 14
meritous | | 5
midi-instruments | [] [] [] [] [] [] | 44
minicom | [] [] | 20
mpop | [] | 9
msmtp | [] | 8
nano | [] [] [] [] [] | 33
opcodes | [] | 8
parted | [] [] [] [] [] | 26
pies | [] [] | 8
pnmixer | [] [] () | 14
procps-ng | [] [] | 10
procps-ng-man | [] | 4
psmisc | [] [] [] [] | 26
psmisc-man | [] | 10
pspp | [] [] | 12
pyspread | [] | 7
radius | [] [] | 10
recode | [] [] [] [] | 31
recutils | [] [] | 9
rush | [] [] [] | 12
sarg | | 7
savane | | 4
sed | [] [] [] [] [] | 38
sharutils | [] [] [] | 14
shepherd | [] | 5
shishi | [] [] | 8
skribilo | [] | 10
solfege | [] [] [] | 22
solfege-manual | [] | 10
spotmachine | [] [] | 12
sudo | [] [] [] [] [] | 31
sudoers | [] [] [] | 21
sysstat | [] [] [] [] | 26
tar | [] [] [] [] [] | 33
texinfo | [] [] [] | 23
texinfo_document | [] | 19
tigervnc | [] [] | 17
tin | [] [] [] | 8
tin-man | | 2
trader | | 13
util-linux | [] [] [] [] | 18
util-linux-man | [] | 4
ve | [] [] [] | 17
vmm | [] | 2
vorbis-tools | [] | 16
wastesedge | [] | 7
wcd | [] [] [] | 15
wcd-man | [] | 8
wdiff | [] [] [] [] | 27
wget | [] [] [] [] [] | 30
wget2 | [] | 11
wyslij-po | [] [] [] | 20
xboard | [] [] [] | 12
xdg-user-dirs | [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] | 72
xkeyboard-config | [] [] [] | 32
xz | [] [] [] [] [] | 22
xz-man | [] | 6
+--------------------------------------------+
85 teams tg th tr uk ur vi wa wo zh_CN zh_HK zh_TW
151 domains 0 8 54 120 1 93 5 1 87 5 42 2792
Some counters in the preceding matrix are higher than the number of visible blocks let us expect. This is because a few extra PO files are used for implementing regional variants of languages, or language dialects.
For a PO file in the matrix above to be effective, the package to which it applies should also have been internationalized and distributed as such by its maintainer. There might be an observable lag between the mere existence a PO file and its wide availability in a distribution.
If June 2023 seems to be old, you may fetch a more recent copy of this ABOUT-NLS file on most GNU archive sites. The most up-to-date matrix with full percentage details can be found at https://translationproject.org/extra/matrix.html.
Previous: Available Packages, Up: Notes on the Free Translation Project [Contents][Index]
gettext in new packagesIf you are writing a freely available program and want to internationalize
it you are welcome to use GNU gettext in your package. Of course
you have to respect the GNU Lesser General Public License which covers
the use of the GNU gettext library. This means in particular that
even non-free programs can use libintl as a shared library, whereas
only free software can use libintl as a static library or use
modified versions of libintl.
Once the sources are changed appropriately and the setup can handle the
use of gettext the only thing missing are the translations. The
Free Translation Project is also available for packages which are not
developed inside the GNU project. Therefore the information given above
applies also for every other Free Software Project. Contact
coordinator@translationproject.org to make the .pot files
available to the translation teams.
Previous: Notes on the Free Translation Project, Up: Concluding Remarks [Contents][Index]
NOTE: This documentation section is outdated and needs to be revised.
Eugene H. Dorr (dorre@well.com) maintains an interesting bibliography on internationalization matters, called Internationalization Reference List, which is available as:
ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/examples/nutshell/ujip/doc/i18n-books.txt
Michael Gschwind (mike@vlsivie.tuwien.ac.at) maintains a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list, entitled Programming for Internationalisation. This FAQ discusses writing programs which can handle different language conventions, character sets, etc.; and is applicable to all character set encodings, with particular emphasis on ISO 8859-1. It is regularly published in Usenet groups comp.unix.questions, comp.std.internat, comp.software.international, comp.lang.c, comp.windows.x, comp.std.c, comp.answers and news.answers. The home location of this document is:
ftp://ftp.vlsivie.tuwien.ac.at/pub/8bit/ISO-programming
Patrick D’Cruze (pdcruze@li.org) wrote a tutorial about NLS matters, and Jochen Hein (Hein@student.tu-clausthal.de) took over the responsibility of maintaining it. It may be found as:
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/utils/nls/catalogs/Incoming/...
...locale-tutorial-0.8.txt.gz
This site is mirrored in:
ftp://ftp.ibp.fr/pub/linux/sunsite/
A French version of the same tutorial should be findable at:
ftp://ftp.ibp.fr/pub/linux/french/docs/
together with French translations of many Linux-related documents.
Next: Country Codes, Previous: Concluding Remarks, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
The ISO 639 standard defines two-letter codes for many languages, and three-letter codes for more rarely used languages. All abbreviations for languages used in the Translation Project should come from this standard.
Next: Rare Language Codes, Up: Language Codes [Contents][Index]
For the commonly used languages, the ISO 639-1 standard defines two-letter codes.
Afar.
Abkhazian.
Avestan.
Afrikaans.
Akan.
Amharic.
Aragonese.
Arabic.
Assamese.
Avaric.
Aymara.
Azerbaijani.
Bashkir.
Belarusian.
Bulgarian.
Bihari languages.
Bislama.
Bambara.
Bengali.
Tibetan.
Breton.
Bosnian.
Catalan; Valencian.
Chechen.
Chamorro.
Corsican.
Cree.
Czech.
Church Slavic; Old Slavonic; Church Slavonic; Old Bulgarian; Old Church Slavonic.
Chuvash.
Welsh.
Danish.
German.
Divehi; Dhivehi; Maldivian.
Dzongkha.
Ewe.
Greek, Modern (1453-).
English.
Esperanto.
Spanish; Castilian.
Estonian.
Basque.
Persian.
Fulah.
Finnish.
Fijian.
Faroese.
French.
Western Frisian.
Irish.
Gaelic; Scottish Gaelic.
Galician.
Guarani.
Gujarati.
Manx.
Hausa.
Hebrew.
Hindi.
Hiri Motu.
Croatian.
Haitian; Haitian Creole.
Hungarian.
Armenian.
Herero.
Interlingua (International Auxiliary Language Association).
Indonesian.
Interlingue; Occidental.
Igbo.
Sichuan Yi; Nuosu.
Inupiak.
Ido.
Icelandic.
Italian.
Inuktitut.
Japanese.
Javanese.
Georgian.
Kongo.
Kikuyu; Gikuyu.
Kuanyama; Kwanyama.
Kazakh.
Kalaallisut; Greenlandic.
Central Khmer.
Kannada.
Korean.
Kanuri.
Kashmiri.
Kurdish.
Komi.
Cornish.
Kirghiz; Kyrgyz.
Latin.
Luxembourgish; Letzeburgesch.
Ganda.
Limburgan; Limburger; Limburgish.
Lingala.
Lao.
Lithuanian.
Luba-Katanga.
Latvian.
Malagasy.
Marshallese.
Maori.
Macedonian.
Malayalam.
Mongolian.
Marathi.
Malay.
Maltese.
Burmese.
Nauru.
Bokmål, Norwegian; Norwegian Bokmål.
Ndebele, North; North Ndebele.
Nepali.
Ndonga.
Dutch; Flemish.
Norwegian Nynorsk; Nynorsk, Norwegian.
Norwegian.
Ndebele, South; South Ndebele.
Navajo; Navaho.
Chichewa; Nyanja.
Occitan (post 1500); Provençal.
Ojibwa.
Oromo.
Oriya.
Ossetian; Ossetic.
Panjabi; Punjabi.
Pali.
Polish.
Pushto; Pashto.
Portuguese.
Quechua.
Romansh.
Rundi.
Romanian; Moldavian; Moldovan.
Russian.
Kinyarwanda.
Sanskrit.
Sardinian.
Sindhi.
Northern Sami.
Sango.
Sinhala; Sinhalese.
Slovak.
Slovenian.
Samoan.
Shona.
Somali.
Albanian.
Serbian.
Swati.
Sotho, Southern.
Sundanese.
Swedish.
Swahili.
Tamil.
Telugu.
Tajik.
Thai.
Tigrinya.
Turkmen.
Tagalog.
Tswana.
Tonga (Tonga Islands).
Turkish.
Tsonga.
Tatar.
Twi.
Tahitian.
Uighur; Uyghur.
Ukrainian.
Urdu.
Uzbek.
Venda.
Vietnamese.
Volapük.
Walloon.
Wolof.
Xhosa.
Yiddish.
Yoruba.
Zhuang; Chuang.
Chinese.
Zulu.
Previous: Usual Language Codes, Up: Language Codes [Contents][Index]
For rarely used languages, the ISO 639-2 standard defines three-letter codes. Here is the current list, reduced to only living languages with at least one million of speakers.
Achinese.
Awadhi.
Baluchi.
Balinese.
Beja; Bedawiyet.
Bemba.
Bhojpuri.
Bikol.
Bini; Edo.
Buginese.
Cebuano.
Dinka.
Dogri.
Filipino; Pilipino.
Fon.
Gondi.
Swiss German; Alemannic; Alsatian.
Hiligaynon.
Hmong.
Iloko.
Kabyle.
Kamba.
Kabardian.
Kimbundu.
Konkani.
Kurukh.
Luba-Lulua.
Luo (Kenya and Tanzania).
Madurese.
Magahi.
Maithili.
Makasar.
Mandingo.
Mende.
Minangkabau.
Manipuri.
Mossi.
Marwari.
Neapolitan.
Pedi; Sepedi; Northern Sotho.
Nyamwezi.
Nyankole.
Pangasinan.
Pampanga; Kapampangan.
Rajasthani.
Sasak.
Santali.
Sicilian.
Shan.
Sidamo.
Serer.
Sukuma.
Susu.
Timne.
Tiv.
Tumbuka.
Umbundu.
Walamo.
Waray.
Yao.
Next: Licenses, Previous: Language Codes, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
The ISO 3166 standard defines two character codes for many countries and territories. All abbreviations for countries used in the Translation Project should come from this standard.
Andorra.
United Arab Emirates.
Afghanistan.
Antigua and Barbuda.
Anguilla.
Albania.
Armenia.
Angola.
Antarctica.
Argentina.
American Samoa.
Austria.
Australia.
Aruba.
Aaland Islands.
Azerbaijan.
Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Barbados.
Bangladesh.
Belgium.
Burkina Faso.
Bulgaria.
Bahrain.
Burundi.
Benin.
Saint Barthelemy.
Bermuda.
Brunei Darussalam.
Bolivia, Plurinational State of.
Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba.
Brazil.
Bahamas.
Bhutan.
Bouvet Island.
Botswana.
Belarus.
Belize.
Canada.
Cocos (Keeling) Islands.
Congo, The Democratic Republic of the.
Central African Republic.
Congo.
Switzerland.
Côte d’Ivoire.
Cook Islands.
Chile.
Cameroon.
China.
Colombia.
Costa Rica.
Cuba.
Cape Verde.
Curaçao.
Christmas Island.
Cyprus.
Czech Republic.
Germany.
Djibouti.
Denmark.
Dominica.
Dominican Republic.
Algeria.
Ecuador.
Estonia.
Egypt.
Western Sahara.
Eritrea.
Spain.
Ethiopia.
Finland.
Fiji.
Falkland Islands (Malvinas).
Micronesia, Federated States of.
Faroe Islands.
France.
Gabon.
United Kingdom.
Grenada.
Georgia.
French Guiana.
Guernsey.
Ghana.
Gibraltar.
Greenland.
Gambia.
Guinea.
Guadeloupe.
Equatorial Guinea.
Greece.
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.
Guatemala.
Guam.
Guinea-Bissau.
Guyana.
Hong Kong.
Heard Island and McDonald Islands.
Honduras.
Croatia.
Haiti.
Hungary.
Indonesia.
Ireland.
Israel.
Isle of Man.
India.
British Indian Ocean Territory.
Iraq.
Iran, Islamic Republic of.
Iceland.
Italy.
Jersey.
Jamaica.
Jordan.
Japan.
Kenya.
Kyrgyzstan.
Cambodia.
Kiribati.
Comoros.
Saint Kitts and Nevis.
Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of.
Korea, Republic of.
Kuwait.
Cayman Islands.
Kazakhstan.
Lao People’s Democratic Republic.
Lebanon.
Saint Lucia.
Liechtenstein.
Sri Lanka.
Liberia.
Lesotho.
Lithuania.
Luxembourg.
Latvia.
Libya.
Morocco.
Monaco.
Moldova, Republic of.
Montenegro.
Saint Martin (French part).
Madagascar.
Marshall Islands.
North Macedonia.
Mali.
Myanmar.
Mongolia.
Macao.
Northern Mariana Islands.
Martinique.
Mauritania.
Montserrat.
Malta.
Mauritius.
Maldives.
Malawi.
Mexico.
Malaysia.
Mozambique.
Namibia.
New Caledonia.
Niger.
Norfolk Island.
Nigeria.
Nicaragua.
Netherlands.
Norway.
Nepal.
Nauru.
Niue.
New Zealand.
Oman.
Panama.
Peru.
French Polynesia.
Papua New Guinea.
Philippines.
Pakistan.
Poland.
Saint Pierre and Miquelon.
Pitcairn.
Puerto Rico.
Palestine, State of.
Portugal.
Palau.
Paraguay.
Qatar.
Reunion.
Romania.
Serbia.
Russian Federation.
Rwanda.
Saudi Arabia.
Solomon Islands.
Seychelles.
Sudan.
Sweden.
Singapore.
Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha.
Slovenia.
Svalbard and Jan Mayen.
Slovakia.
Sierra Leone.
San Marino.
Senegal.
Somalia.
Suriname.
South Sudan.
Sao Tome and Principe.
El Salvador.
Sint Maarten (Dutch part).
Syrian Arab Republic.
Swaziland.
Turks and Caicos Islands.
Chad.
French Southern Territories.
Togo.
Thailand.
Tajikistan.
Tokelau.
Timor-Leste.
Turkmenistan.
Tunisia.
Tonga.
Türkiye.
Trinidad and Tobago.
Tuvalu.
Taiwan, Province of China.
Tanzania, United Republic of.
Ukraine.
Uganda.
United States Minor Outlying Islands.
United States.
Uruguay.
Uzbekistan.
Holy See (Vatican City State).
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of.
Virgin Islands, British.
Virgin Islands, U.S..
Viet Nam.
Vanuatu.
Wallis and Futuna.
Samoa.
Yemen.
Mayotte.
South Africa.
Zambia.
Zimbabwe.
Next: Program Index, Previous: Country Codes, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
The files of this package are covered by the licenses indicated in each particular file or directory. Here is a summary:
libintl and libasprintf libraries are covered by the
GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
A copy of the license is included in GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE.
libgettextpo library
are covered by the GNU General Public License (GPL).
A copy of the license is included in GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE.
Next: GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, Up: Licenses [Contents][Index]
Copyright © 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software—to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation’s software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Lesser General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.
We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.
Also, for each author’s protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors’ reputations.
Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone’s free use or not licensed at all.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.
In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.
If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.
If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.
It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice.
This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and “any later version”, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.
If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.
To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least the “copyright” line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does. Copyright (C) yyyy name of author This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.
If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode:
Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) year name of author Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c' for details.
The hypothetical commands ‘show w’ and ‘show c’ should show the appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be called something other than ‘show w’ and ‘show c’; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items—whatever suits your program.
You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your school, if any, to sign a “copyright disclaimer” for the program, if necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names:
Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program `Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker. signature of Ty Coon, 1 April 1989 Ty Coon, President of Vice
This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Lesser General Public License instead of this License.
Next: GNU Free Documentation License, Previous: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, Up: Licenses [Contents][Index]
Copyright © 1991, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. [This is the first released version of the Lesser GPL. It also counts as the successor of the GNU Library Public License, version 2, hence the version number 2.1.]
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public Licenses are intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software—to make sure the software is free for all its users.
This license, the Lesser General Public License, applies to some specially designated software—typically libraries—of the Free Software Foundation and other authors who decide to use it. You can use it too, but we suggest you first think carefully about whether this license or the ordinary General Public License is the better strategy to use in any particular case, based on the explanations below.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom of use, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish); that you receive source code or can get it if you want it; that you can change the software and use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you are informed that you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid distributors to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender these rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the library or if you modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of the library, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that we gave you. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. If you link other code with the library, you must provide complete object files to the recipients, so that they can relink them with the library after making changes to the library and recompiling it. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.
We protect your rights with a two-step method: (1) we copyright the library, and (2) we offer you this license, which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the library.
To protect each distributor, we want to make it very clear that there is no warranty for the free library. Also, if the library is modified by someone else and passed on, the recipients should know that what they have is not the original version, so that the original author’s reputation will not be affected by problems that might be introduced by others.
Finally, software patents pose a constant threat to the existence of any free program. We wish to make sure that a company cannot effectively restrict the users of a free program by obtaining a restrictive license from a patent holder. Therefore, we insist that any patent license obtained for a version of the library must be consistent with the full freedom of use specified in this license.
Most GNU software, including some libraries, is covered by the ordinary GNU General Public License. This license, the GNU Lesser General Public License, applies to certain designated libraries, and is quite different from the ordinary General Public License. We use this license for certain libraries in order to permit linking those libraries into non-free programs.
When a program is linked with a library, whether statically or using a shared library, the combination of the two is legally speaking a combined work, a derivative of the original library. The ordinary General Public License therefore permits such linking only if the entire combination fits its criteria of freedom. The Lesser General Public License permits more lax criteria for linking other code with the library.
We call this license the Lesser General Public License because it does Less to protect the user’s freedom than the ordinary General Public License. It also provides other free software developers Less of an advantage over competing non-free programs. These disadvantages are the reason we use the ordinary General Public License for many libraries. However, the Lesser license provides advantages in certain special circumstances.
For example, on rare occasions, there may be a special need to encourage the widest possible use of a certain library, so that it becomes a de-facto standard. To achieve this, non-free programs must be allowed to use the library. A more frequent case is that a free library does the same job as widely used non-free libraries. In this case, there is little to gain by limiting the free library to free software only, so we use the Lesser General Public License.
In other cases, permission to use a particular library in non-free programs enables a greater number of people to use a large body of free software. For example, permission to use the GNU C Library in non-free programs enables many more people to use the whole GNU operating system, as well as its variant, the GNU/Linux operating system.
Although the Lesser General Public License is Less protective of the users’ freedom, it does ensure that the user of a program that is linked with the Library has the freedom and the wherewithal to run that program using a modified version of the Library.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow. Pay close attention to the difference between a “work based on the library” and a “work that uses the library”. The former contains code derived from the library, whereas the latter must be combined with the library in order to run.
A “library” means a collection of software functions and/or data prepared so as to be conveniently linked with application programs (which use some of those functions and data) to form executables.
The “Library”, below, refers to any such software library or work which has been distributed under these terms. A “work based on the Library” means either the Library or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Library or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated straightforwardly into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term “modification”.)
“Source code” for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For a library, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the library.
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running a program using the Library is not restricted, and output from such a program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Library (independent of the use of the Library in a tool for writing it). Whether that is true depends on what the Library does and what the program that uses the Library does.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
(For example, a function in a library to compute square roots has a purpose that is entirely well-defined independent of the application. Therefore, Subsection 2d requires that any application-supplied function or table used by this function must be optional: if the application does not supply it, the square root function must still compute square roots.)
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Library, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Library, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Library.
In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Library with the Library (or with a work based on the Library) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.
Once this change is made in a given copy, it is irreversible for that copy, so the ordinary GNU General Public License applies to all subsequent copies and derivative works made from that copy.
This option is useful when you wish to copy part of the code of the Library into a program that is not a library.
If distribution of object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place satisfies the requirement to distribute the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.
However, linking a “work that uses the Library” with the Library creates an executable that is a derivative of the Library (because it contains portions of the Library), rather than a “work that uses the library”. The executable is therefore covered by this License. Section 6 states terms for distribution of such executables.
When a “work that uses the Library” uses material from a header file that is part of the Library, the object code for the work may be a derivative work of the Library even though the source code is not. Whether this is true is especially significant if the work can be linked without the Library, or if the work is itself a library. The threshold for this to be true is not precisely defined by law.
If such an object file uses only numerical parameters, data structure layouts and accessors, and small macros and small inline functions (ten lines or less in length), then the use of the object file is unrestricted, regardless of whether it is legally a derivative work. (Executables containing this object code plus portions of the Library will still fall under Section 6.)
Otherwise, if the work is a derivative of the Library, you may distribute the object code for the work under the terms of Section 6. Any executables containing that work also fall under Section 6, whether or not they are linked directly with the Library itself.
You must give prominent notice with each copy of the work that the Library is used in it and that the Library and its use are covered by this License. You must supply a copy of this License. If the work during execution displays copyright notices, you must include the copyright notice for the Library among them, as well as a reference directing the user to the copy of this License. Also, you must do one of these things:
For an executable, the required form of the “work that uses the Library” must include any data and utility programs needed for reproducing the executable from it. However, as a special exception, the materials to be distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.
It may happen that this requirement contradicts the license restrictions of other proprietary libraries that do not normally accompany the operating system. Such a contradiction means you cannot use both them and the Library together in an executable that you distribute.
If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply, and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.
It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice.
This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Library specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and “any later version”, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Library does not specify a license version number, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.
If you develop a new library, and you want it to be of the greatest possible use to the public, we recommend making it free software that everyone can redistribute and change. You can do so by permitting redistribution under these terms (or, alternatively, under the terms of the ordinary General Public License).
To apply these terms, attach the following notices to the library. It is safest to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least the “copyright” line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
one line to give the library's name and an idea of what it does. Copyright (C) year name of author This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.
You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your school, if any, to sign a “copyright disclaimer” for the library, if necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names:
Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the library `Frob' (a library for tweaking knobs) written by James Random Hacker. signature of Ty Coon, 1 April 1990 Ty Coon, President of Vice
That’s all there is to it!
Previous: GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, Up: Licenses [Contents][Index]
Copyright © 2000,2001,2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others.
This License is a kind of “copyleft”, which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software.
We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference.
This License applies to any manual or other work, in any medium, that contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms of this License. Such a notice grants a world-wide, royalty-free license, unlimited in duration, to use that work under the conditions stated herein. The “Document”, below, refers to any such manual or work. Any member of the public is a licensee, and is addressed as “you”. You accept the license if you copy, modify or distribute the work in a way requiring permission under copyright law.
A “Modified Version” of the Document means any work containing the Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or translated into another language.
A “Secondary Section” is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the Document’s overall subject (or to related matters) and contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall subject. (Thus, if the Document is in part a textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) The relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding them.
The “Invariant Sections” are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License. If a section does not fit the above definition of Secondary then it is not allowed to be designated as Invariant. The Document may contain zero Invariant Sections. If the Document does not identify any Invariant Sections then there are none.
The “Cover Texts” are certain short passages of text that are listed, as Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License. A Front-Cover Text may be at most 5 words, and a Back-Cover Text may be at most 25 words.
A “Transparent” copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy, represented in a format whose specification is available to the general public, that is suitable for revising the document straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup, or absence of markup, has been arranged to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent. An image format is not Transparent if used for any substantial amount of text. A copy that is not “Transparent” is called “Opaque”.
Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML or XML using a publicly available DTD, and standard-conforming simple HTML, PostScript or PDF designed for human modification. Examples of transparent image formats include PNG, XCF and JPG. Opaque formats include proprietary formats that can be read and edited only by proprietary word processors, SGML or XML for which the DTD and/or processing tools are not generally available, and the machine-generated HTML, PostScript or PDF produced by some word processors for output purposes only.
The “Title Page” means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus such following pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material this License requires to appear in the title page. For works in formats which do not have any title page as such, “Title Page” means the text near the most prominent appearance of the work’s title, preceding the beginning of the body of the text.
A section “Entitled XYZ” means a named subunit of the Document whose title either is precisely XYZ or contains XYZ in parentheses following text that translates XYZ in another language. (Here XYZ stands for a specific section name mentioned below, such as “Acknowledgements”, “Dedications”, “Endorsements”, or “History”.) To “Preserve the Title” of such a section when you modify the Document means that it remains a section “Entitled XYZ” according to this definition.
The Document may include Warranty Disclaimers next to the notice which states that this License applies to the Document. These Warranty Disclaimers are considered to be included by reference in this License, but only as regards disclaiming warranties: any other implication that these Warranty Disclaimers may have is void and has no effect on the meaning of this License.
You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. However, you may accept compensation in exchange for copies. If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3.
You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and you may publicly display copies.
If you publish printed copies (or copies in media that commonly have printed covers) of the Document, numbering more than 100, and the Document’s license notice requires Cover Texts, you must enclose the copies in covers that carry, clearly and legibly, all these Cover Texts: Front-Cover Texts on the front cover, and Back-Cover Texts on the back cover. Both covers must also clearly and legibly identify you as the publisher of these copies. The front cover must present the full title with all words of the title equally prominent and visible. You may add other material on the covers in addition. Copying with changes limited to the covers, as long as they preserve the title of the Document and satisfy these conditions, can be treated as verbatim copying in other respects.
If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly, you should put the first ones listed (as many as fit reasonably) on the actual cover, and continue the rest onto adjacent pages.
If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a computer-network location from which the general network-using public has access to download using public-standard network protocols a complete Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material. If you use the latter option, you must take reasonably prudent steps, when you begin distribution of Opaque copies in quantity, to ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that edition to the public.
It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the Document well before redistributing any large number of copies, to give them a chance to provide you with an updated version of the Document.
You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License, with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document, thus licensing distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:
If the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or appendices that qualify as Secondary Sections and contain no material copied from the Document, you may at your option designate some or all of these sections as invariant. To do this, add their titles to the list of Invariant Sections in the Modified Version’s license notice. These titles must be distinct from any other section titles.
You may add a section Entitled “Endorsements”, provided it contains nothing but endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties—for example, statements of peer review or that the text has been approved by an organization as the authoritative definition of a standard.
You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a passage of up to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified Version. Only one passage of Front-Cover Text and one of Back-Cover Text may be added by (or through arrangements made by) any one entity. If the Document already includes a cover text for the same cover, previously added by you or by arrangement made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of, you may not add another; but you may replace the old one, on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the old one.
The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified Version.
You may combine the Document with other documents released under this License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions, provided that you include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of all of the original documents, unmodified, and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license notice, and that you preserve all their Warranty Disclaimers.
The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy. If there are multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but different contents, make the title of each such section unique by adding at the end of it, in parentheses, the name of the original author or publisher of that section if known, or else a unique number. Make the same adjustment to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work.
In the combination, you must combine any sections Entitled “History” in the various original documents, forming one section Entitled “History”; likewise combine any sections Entitled “Acknowledgements”, and any sections Entitled “Dedications”. You must delete all sections Entitled “Endorsements.”
You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents released under this License, and replace the individual copies of this License in the various documents with a single copy that is included in the collection, provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all other respects.
You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it individually under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted document, and follow this License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of that document.
A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an “aggregate” if the copyright resulting from the compilation is not used to limit the legal rights of the compilation’s users beyond what the individual works permit. When the Document is included in an aggregate, this License does not apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document.
If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Document, then if the Document is less than one half of the entire aggregate, the Document’s Cover Texts may be placed on covers that bracket the Document within the aggregate, or the electronic equivalent of covers if the Document is in electronic form. Otherwise they must appear on printed covers that bracket the whole aggregate.
Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute translations of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing Invariant Sections with translations requires special permission from their copyright holders, but you may include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the original versions of these Invariant Sections. You may include a translation of this License, and all the license notices in the Document, and any Warranty Disclaimers, provided that you also include the original English version of this License and the original versions of those notices and disclaimers. In case of a disagreement between the translation and the original version of this License or a notice or disclaimer, the original version will prevail.
If a section in the Document is Entitled “Acknowledgements”, “Dedications”, or “History”, the requirement (section 4) to Preserve its Title (section 1) will typically require changing the actual title.
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as expressly provided for under this License. Any other attempt to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Document is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. See https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/.
Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License “or any later version” applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation.
To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of the License in the document and put the following copyright and license notices just after the title page:
Copyright (C) year your name. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License''.
If you have Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts and Back-Cover Texts, replace the “with…Texts.” line with this:
with the Invariant Sections being list their titles, with
the Front-Cover Texts being list, and with the Back-Cover Texts
being list.
If you have Invariant Sections without Cover Texts, or some other combination of the three, merge those two alternatives to suit the situation.
If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we recommend releasing these examples in parallel under your choice of free software license, such as the GNU General Public License, to permit their use in free software.
Next: Option Index, Previous: Licenses, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
| Jump to: | A B E G M N Q R X |
|---|
| Jump to: | A B E G M N Q R X |
|---|
Next: Variable Index, Previous: Program Index, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
| Jump to: | - |
|---|
| Jump to: | - |
|---|
Next: PO Mode Index, Previous: Option Index, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
| Jump to: | G L M O P T |
|---|
| Jump to: | G L M O P T |
|---|
Next: Autoconf Macro Index, Previous: Variable Index, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
| Jump to: | #
,
.
0
<
=
>
?
_
A C D E F H I K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y |
|---|
| Jump to: | #
,
.
0
<
=
>
?
_
A C D E F H I K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y |
|---|
Next: General Index, Previous: PO Mode Index, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
| Jump to: | A |
|---|
| Jump to: | A |
|---|
Previous: Autoconf Macro Index, Up: GNU gettext utilities [Contents][Index]
| Jump to: | _
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y |
|---|
| Jump to: | _
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y |
|---|
In this manual, all mentions of Emacs refers to either GNU Emacs or to XEmacs, which people sometimes call FSF Emacs and Lucid Emacs, respectively.
This
limitation is not imposed by GNU gettext, but is for compatibility
with the msgfmt implementation on Solaris.
Some
system, e.g. mingw, don’t have LC_MESSAGES. Here we use a more or
less arbitrary value for it, namely 1729, the smallest positive integer
which can be represented in two different ways as the sum of two cubes.
When the system does not support setlocale its behavior
in setting the locale values is simulated by looking at the environment
variables.
Additions are welcome. Send appropriate information to
bug-gettext@gnu.org and bug-glibc-manual@gnu.org.
The Unicode CLDR Project (http://cldr.unicode.org) provides a
comprehensive set of plural forms in a different format. The
msginit program has preliminary support for the format so you can
use it as a baseline (see Invoking the msginit Program).
you can also use it through the ‘MSGMERGE_OPTIONS’ option from Makevars
Note that the file name matching is done after
removing any .in suffix from the input file name. Thus the
pattern attribute must not include a pattern matching .in.
For example, if the input file name is foo.msg.in, the pattern
should be either *.msg or just *, rather than
*.in.