Re: Changing the lang by an application

[Tuomas Lukka <lukka fas harvard edu>]

On Sat, 21 Nov 1998, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> So if labels called gettext() internally on whatever string they received,
> it would just work? How do apps mark strings for translation? (N_ ?)
> 
> I guess the problem is that Gtk doesn't use gettext, so you have to
> translate the string before the label gets it and the label gets the
> translated copy. 
> 
> Looks to me like we already trigger a full redraw when changing themes, so
> once Gtk supports gettext this would follow naturally (problem being all
> the legacy code that still translates the string before sticking it in the
> label).

This approach would have several problems, the most horrible one being
that if someone had translated a certain string, it would be impossible
to show that string in any context in Gtk after that.

It's a really, really good idea to have Gtk display whatever it gets
and let the applications worry about internationalization. The only
way I see moving something like that inside Gtk would not have any
bad effects would be if there was a per-widget flag "translate" which
would choose whether to translate the strings in that widget.

	Tuomas