docs/tech/tn0002.txt

   1                           wxWindows translator guide
   2                           ==========================
   3
   4 This note is addressed to wxWindows translators.
   5
   6 First of all, here is what you will need:
   7
   8 1. 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.wxwindows.org
  16
  17 2. A way to run a program recursively on an entire directory from the command
  18    line:
  19
  20    a) for Unix systems, this is done in locale/Makefile using the standard find
  21       command and xargs which is installed on almost all modern Unices.  If you
  22       are unlucky enough to not have xargs, you can use the -exec option of find
  23       instead.
  24
  25    b) for Win32 systems this is less trivial: if you have 4DOS/4NT/bash, that's
  26       fine, but you'd have to use some kind of "for /s" loop with the
  27       command.com/cmd.exe.
  28
  29 3. (at least read) access to the cvs is not necessary strictly speaking, but
  30    will make the things a lot easier for you and others.
  31
  32
  33 Now a brief overview of the process of translations (please refer to GNU
  34 gettext documentation for more details). It happens in several steps:
  35
  36 1. the strings to translate are extracted from the C++ sources using xgettext
  37    program into a wxstd.po file which is a "text message catalog"
  38
  39 2. this new wxstd.po file (recreated each time some new text messages are added
  40    to wxWindows) is merged with existing translations in another .po file (for
  41    example, de.po) and replaces this file (this is done using the program
  42    msgmerge)
  43
  44 3. the resulting .po file must be translated
  45
  46 4. finally, msgformat must be run to produce a .mo file: "binary message catalog"
  47
  48
  49 How does it happen in practice? Under Unix there is a Makefile in the "locale"
  50 directory which will do almost everything (except translations) for you, i.e.
  51 just type "make lang.po" to create or update the message catalog for 'lang'.
  52 Then edit the resulting lang.po and make sure that there are no empty or fuzzy
  53 translations left (empty translations are the ones with msgstr "", fuzzy
  54 translations are those which have the word "fuzzy" in a comment just above
  55 them). Then type "make lang.mo" which will create the binary message catalog.
  56
  57 Under Windows, you should execute the commands manually, please have a look at
  58 Makefile to see what must be done.
  59
  60 === EOF ===
  61
  62 Author:  VZ
  63 Version: $Id$
  64
  65 $Log$
  66 Revision 1.2  2002/07/03 15:01:26  VZ
  67 typos and other doc corrections from Olly Betts (patch 573738)
  68
  69 Revision 1.1  2000/03/07 10:53:53  VZ
  70 technote about translations added
  71