| 123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566676869707172737475767778798081828384858687888990919293949596979899100101102103104105106107108109110111112113114115116117118119120121122 |
- /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
- // Name: internationalization.h
- // Purpose: topic overview
- // Author: wxWidgets team
- // Licence: wxWindows licence
- /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
- /**
- @page overview_i18n Internationalization
- @tableofcontents
- 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. wxWidgets provides
- facilities for message translation with its wxLocale class and is itself fully
- translated into several 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 future versions of the library!
- 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 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 working with
- message catalogs. @b Warning: gettext versions @< 0.10 are known to be buggy,
- so you should find a later version of it!
- 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 @e msgfmt program (part of gettext package) and have the extension .mo.
- Only the binary files are needed during program execution.
- Translating your application involves several steps:
- @li Translating the strings in the program text using wxGetTranslation or
- equivalently the @c _() macro.
- @li Extracting the strings to be translated from the program: this uses the
- work done in the previous step because @c xgettext program used for string
- extraction recognises the standard @c _() as well as (using its @c -k
- option) our wxGetTranslation and extracts all strings inside the calls to
- these functions. Alternatively, you may use @c -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.
- @li Translating the strings extracted in the previous step to other
- language(s). It involves editing the .po file.
- @li Compiling the .po file into .mo file to be used by the program.
- @li Installing the .mo files with your application in the appropriate location
- for the target system (@see overview_i18n_mofiles).
- @li Setting the appropriate locale in your program to use the strings for the
- given language: see wxLocale.
- @section overview_i18n_mofiles Installing translation catalogs
- The .mo files with compiled catalogs must be included with the application.
- By default, wxFileTranslationsLoader is used to load them from files installed
- alongside the application (although you could use wxResourceTranslationsLoader
- or some custom loader too).
- The files are expected to be in the resources directory (as returned by
- wxStandardPaths::GetLocalizedResourcesDir(wxStandardPaths::ResourceCat_Messages).
- If the message catalogs are not installed in this default location you may
- explicitly use wxFileTranslationsLoader::AddCatalogLookupPathPrefix() to still
- allow wxWidgets to find them, but it is recommended to use the default
- locations when possible.
- Depending on the platform, the default location differs. On Windows, it is
- alongside the executable. On Unix, translations are expected to be in
- "$prefix/share/locale". On OS X, application bundle's @em Resources subdirectory
- is used.
- In all cases, translations are searched for in subdirectories named using the
- languages codes from ISO 639. The .mo file(s) should be located either directly
- in that directory or in LC_MESSAGES subdirectory. On OS X, ".lproj" extension
- is used for the per-languages Resources subdirectories.
- Here's how an app would typically install the files on Unix:
- @code
- /usr/bin/myapp
- /usr/share/locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/myapp.mo
- /usr/share/locale/fr/LC_MESSAGES/myapp.mo
- @endcode
- And on OS X:
- @code
- MyApp.app/Contents/MacOS/MyApp
- MyApp.app/Contents/Resources/de.lproj/myapp.mo
- MyApp.app/Contents/Resources/fr.lproj/myapp.mo
- @endcode
- And on Windows:
- @code
- C:\Program Files\MyApp\myapp.exe
- C:\Program Files\MyApp\de\myapp.mo
- C:\Program Files\MyApp\fr\myapp.mo
- @endcode
- It is of course possible to use the Unix layout everywhere instead.
- @section overview_i18n_menuaccel 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.
- @see
- @li The gettext Manual: http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html
- @li @ref overview_nonenglish - It focuses on handling charsets related problems.
- @li @ref page_samples_internat - Shows you how all this looks in practice.
- */
|