9.2. Message translation

9.2.1. Gettext and utils for po-files translation

Gettext is a common package, widely used for message localisation.

The "gettext" package have two main parts - the message extraction and preparing utilites, and a library for runtime message handling.

CLIP use some "gettext" utilities for message extracting and preparing of message files, but use own code for runtime message handling.

9.2.2. CLIP po-files and dirs, clip_msg* utils

CLIP have number of utilites to make the message handling easier.

Locale message roadmap:

• Extracting of message and creating the .pot (po-template) file.

  For extracting messages from C sources may be used xgettext command from gettext package.

  CLIP automatically extract messages, quoted in [] brackets, and store them in $CLIPROOT/locale/pot/<modulename>/<filename>.pot file.

  The <modulename> determined by CLIP from current working directory name, or may be specified by environment variable CLIP_MODULE.

  The <filename> determined from name of compiled file.

• Use script clip_msgmerge to merge .pot files from directory $CLIPROOT/locale.pot with translated .po files in directory $CLIPROOT/locale.po.

  clip_msgmerge merge files for all locales in $CLIPROOT/locale.po/<locale>. To add new locale you just need create appropriate directory, for example, $CLIPROOT/locale.po/ru_RU.KOI8-R for locale ru_RU.KOI8-R.

• You must edit created .po files in any text editor, or use specialized po-file editor, like kbabel from KDE suite.

  	Charset definition in .po file.
  	Please check the field "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ASCII" in first entry of .po file. You must set valid value of charset, used in this file (for example, "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=KOI8-R"). This is very important for correct message handling.

• And the last step: invoke script clip_msgfmt to format messages into compiled message file in directory $CLIPROOT/locale.mo

  Now, CLIP runtime will fetch nesessary messages from this files, and substitute it in your program.