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 of GNU
  12       mirrors (RPMs and DEBs are also available from the usual places)
  13
  14    b) for Windows you can grab the precompiled binaries from www.wxwindows.org
  15
  16 2. A way to run a program recursively on an entire directory from the command
  17    line:
  18
  19    a) for Unix systems, this is done in locale/Makefile using standard find
  20       command and xargs which is installed on almost all modern Unices, if you
  21       are unhappy enough to not have it you can use -exec option of find
  22       instead.
  23
  24    b) for Win32 systems this is less trivial: if you have 4DOS/4NT/bash, that's
  25       fine, but you'd have to use some kind of "for /s" loop with the
  26       command.com/cmd.exe.
  27
  28 3. (at least read) access to the cvs is not necessary strictly speaking, but
  29    will make the things a lot easier for you and others.
  30
  31
  32 Now a brief overview of the process of translations (please refer to GNU
  33 gettext documentation for more details). It happens in several steps:
  34
  35 1. the strings to translate are extracted from the C++ sources using xgettext
  36    program into a wxstd.po file which is a "text message catalog"
  37
  38 2. this new wxtd.po file (recreated each one some new text messages are added
  39    to wxWindows) is merged with existing translations in another .po file (for
  40    example, de.po) and replaces this file (this is done using the program
  41    msgmerge)
  42
  43 3. the resulting .po file must be translated
  44
  45 4. finally, msgformat must be run to produce a .mo file: "binary message catalog"
  46
  47
  48 How does it happen in practice? Under Unix there is a Makefile under "locale"
  49 directory which will do almost everything (except translations) for you, i.e.
  50 just type "make lang.po" to create or update the message catalog for 'lang'.
  51 Then edit the resulting lang.po and make sure that there are no empty or fuzzy
  52 translations left (empty translations are the one with msgstr "", fuzzy
  53 translations are those which have the word "fuzzy" in a comment just above
  54 them). Then type "make lang.mo" which will create the binary message catalog.
  55
  56 Under Windows, you should execute the commands manually, please have a look at
  57 Makefile to see what must be done.
  58
  59 === EOF ===
  60
  61 Author:  VZ
  62 Version: $Id$
  63
  64 $Log$
  65 Revision 1.1  2000/03/07 10:53:53  VZ
  66 technote about translations added
  67