\section{Internationalization}\label{internationalization}
-Although internationalization (i18n for short) of an application involves far
-more than just translating its text messages to another message (date, time and
+Although internationalization of an application (i18n for short) involves far
+more than just translating its text messages to another message - date, time and
currency formats need changing too, some languages are written left to right
and others right to left, character encoding may differ and many other things
-may need changing too), it is a necessary first step. wxWindows provides
-facilities for the messages translation with its
+may need changing too - it is a necessary first step. wxWidgets provides
+facilities for message translation with its
\helpref{wxLocale}{wxlocale} class and is itself fully translated into several
-languages. Please consult wxWindows home page for the most up-to-date
+languages. Please consult wxWidgets home page for the most up-to-date
translations - and if you translate it into one of the languages not done
-yet, your translations would be gratefully accepted for inclusion into the
-future versions of the library!
+yet, your translations would be gratefully accepted for inclusion into future
+versions of the library!
-The wxWindows approach to i18n closely follows GNU gettext package. wxWindows uses the
+The wxWidgets approach to i18n closely follows the GNU gettext package. wxWidgets uses the
message catalogs which are binary compatible with gettext catalogs and this
allows to use all of the programs in this package to work with them. But note
-that no additional libraries are needed during the run-time, however, so you
+that no additional libraries are needed during run-time, however, so you
have only the message catalogs to distribute and nothing else.
During program development you will need the gettext package for
There are two kinds of message catalogs: source catalogs which are text files
with extension .po and binary catalogs which are created from the source ones
-with {\it msgfmt} program (part fo gettext package) and have the extension .mo.
+with {\it msgfmt} program (part of gettext package) and have the extension .mo.
Only the binary files are needed during program execution.
The program i18n involves several steps:
\begin{enumerate}\itemsep=0pt
\item Translating the strings in the program text using
-\helpref{wxGetTranslation}{wxgettranslation} or equivalently the \_() macro.
+\helpref{wxGetTranslation}{wxgettranslation} or equivalently the
+\helpref{\_()}{underscore} macro.
\item Extracting the strings to be translated from the program: this uses the
-work done in the previous step because {\it xgettext} program used for string
-extraction may be told (using its -k option) to recognise \_() and
-wxGetTranslation and extract all strings inside the calls to these functions.
-Alternatively, you may use -a option to extract all the strings, but it will
-usually result in many strings being found which don't have to be translated at
-all. This will create a text message catalog - a .po file.
+work done in the previous step because {\tt xgettext} program used for string
+extraction recognises the standard \_() as well as (using its {\tt -k} option)
+our wxGetTranslation and extracts all strings inside the calls to these
+functions. Alternatively, you may use {\tt -a} option to extract all the
+strings, but it will usually result in many strings being found which don't
+have to be translated at all. This will create a text message catalog - a .po
+file.
\item Translating the strings extracted in the previous step to other
language(s). It involves editing the .po file.
\item Compiling the .po file into .mo file to be used by the program.
+\item Installing the .mo files with your application in the appropriate
+location for the target system which is the one returned by
+\helpref{wxStandardPaths::GetLocalizedResourcesDir(wxStandardPaths::ResourceCat\_Messages)}{wxstandardpathsgetlocalizedresourcesdir}.
+If the message catalogs are not installed in this default location you may
+explicitly use \helpref{AddCatalogLookupPathPrefix()}{wxlocaleaddcataloglookuppathprefix} to
+still allow wxWidgets to find them but it is strongly recommended to use the
+default directory.
\item Setting the appropriate locale in your program to use the strings for the
given language: see \helpref{wxLocale}{wxlocale}.
\end{enumerate}
See also the GNU gettext documentation linked from {\tt docs/html/index.htm} in
-your wxWindows distribution.
+your wxWidgets distribution.
-See also
-\helpref{Writing non-English applications.}{nonenglishoverview}
+See also \helpref{Writing non-English applications}{nonenglishoverview}.
It focuses on handling charsets related problems.
+Finally, take a look at the \helpref{i18n sample}{sampleinternat} which shows
+you how all this looks in practice.
+
+\wxheading{Translating menu accelerators}
+
+If you translate the accelerator modifier names (Ctrl, Alt and Shift) in your menu labels, you may find
+the accelerators no longer work. In your message catalogs, you need to provide individual translations
+of these modifiers from their lower case names (ctrl, alt, shift) so that the wxWidgets accelerator
+code can recognise them even when translated. wxWidgets does not provide translations for all of these
+currently. wxWidgets does not yet handle translated special key names such as Backspace,
+End, Insert, etc.
+
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