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1 wxWidgets translator guide
2 ==========================
3
4This note is addressed to wxWidgets translators.
5
6First of all, here is what you will need:
7
81. GNU gettext package version 0.10.35 or later (NB: earlier versions were
9 known to have serious bugs)
10
11 a) for Unix systems you can download gettext-0.10.tar.gz from any GNU
12 mirror (RPMs and DEBs are also available from the usual places)
13
14 b) for Windows you can download the precompiled binaries from
15 www.wxwidgets.org or install PoEdit (poedit.sourceforge.net) and
16 add <installdir>/poEdit/bin to your path (so it can find xgettext).
17
182. A way to run a program recursively on an entire directory from the command
19 line:
20
21 a) for Unix systems, this is done in locale/Makefile using the standard find
22 command and xargs which is installed on almost all modern Unices. If you
23 are unlucky enough to not have xargs, you can use the -exec option of find
24 instead.
25
26 b) for Win32 systems you can use either Cygwin or MinGW. If you don't have
27 those it is less trivial: if you have 4DOS/4NT/bash, that's
28 fine, but you'd have to use some kind of "for /s" loop with the
29 command.com/cmd.exe.
30
313. (at least read) access to the cvs is not necessary strictly speaking, but
32 will make things a lot easier for you and others.
33
34
35Now a brief overview of the process of translations (please refer to GNU
36gettext documentation for more details). It happens in several steps:
37
381. the strings to translate are extracted from the C++ sources using xgettext
39 program into a wxstd.po file which is a "text message catalog"
40
412. this new wxstd.po file (recreated each time some new text messages are added
42 to wxWidgets) is merged with existing translations in another .po file (for
43 example, de.po) and replaces this file (this is done using the program
44 msgmerge)
45
463. the resulting .po file must be translated
47
484. finally, msgformat must be run to produce a .mo file: "binary message catalog"
49
50
51How does it happen in practice? There is a Makefile in the "locale"
52directory which will do almost everything (except translations) for you. i.e.
53just type "make lang.po" to create or update the message catalog for 'lang'.
54Then edit the resulting lang.po and make sure that there are no empty or fuzzy
55translations left (empty translations are the ones with msgstr "", fuzzy
56translations are those which have the word "fuzzy" in a comment just above
57them). Then type "make lang.mo" which will create the binary message catalog.
58
59Under Windows (If you don't have Cygwin or MinGW), you should execute the
60commands manually, please have a look at Makefile to see what must be done.
61
62For platform specific translations, .po files such as 'locale/msw/it.po' can be
63used to provide translations that override the usual ones in 'locale/it.po'.
64The generated .mo files are then installed under the names such as 'wxmsw.mo'
65alongside the generic 'wxstd.mo'.
66
67A new platform specific translation should be added to a section such as this
68in wx.bkl:
69
70 <gettext-catalogs id="locale_msw">
71 <srcdir>$(SRCDIR)/locale/msw</srcdir>
72 <catalog-name>wxmsw</catalog-name>
73 <linguas>it</linguas>
74 <install-to>$(LOCALEDIR)</install-to>
75 </gettext-catalogs>
76
77=== EOF ===
78
79Author: VZ
80Version: $Id$
81
82$Log$
83Revision 1.7 2005/08/12 15:34:01 MW
84Typo
85
86Revision 1.6 2005/08/12 15:29:47 MW
87Translate '&Help' to '&' for italian Windows only
88
89Revision 1.5 2004/10/22 19:12:59 KH
90*** empty log message ***
91
92Revision 1.4 2004/05/04 08:26:58 JS
93Name change replacements
94
95Revision 1.3 2003/11/18 16:37:11 DS
96Updated translation technote to mention Makefile usage under Windows.
97
98Revision 1.2 2002/07/03 15:01:26 VZ
99typos and other doc corrections from Olly Betts (patch 573738)
100
101Revision 1.1 2000/03/07 10:53:53 VZ
102technote about translations added
103