Re: gettext questions

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik pobox com>]

Owen Taylor wrote:
> I've been looking at Daniel Egger's patch for localization
> of GTK+ via gettext recently, and I had a few questions/thoughts.
> 
>  * What is the exact situation as to the requirements that this
>    puts on the system where GTK+ is being installed?
> 
>    In theory, according to ABOUT_NLS, it should automatically 
>    get things right:
> 
>     - If GNU gettext is installed, use that
>     - If catgets() is installed use that
>     - Otherwise, use the included gettext.
> 
>    However, I still see quite a few messages on gnome-list 
>    where people have problems with gettext, and the solutions
>    people suggest are often either "install gettext 10.35"
>    or, "use --with-included-gettext". Which worries me a bit.

There are many problems like this with the gettext package.  I also have
beef with the installation Makefile sections, which doesn't support many
of the newer GNU standards, like DESTDIR (used to create packages).

Solaris is one such case where --with-included-gettext is necessary.
It supports gettext function, but doesn't have a compatible xgettext
program.  (GNU gettext hard-codes GNU-ish args to xgettext)
--with-included-gettext is necessary to compile.  But if the
translations haven't already been built from the source files, you're
screwed without a compatible xgettext...


[...]
>  * In gtkitemfactory.c debugging messages are marked for translation.
>    For instance:
> 
>       g_warning (_("GtkItemFactory: invalid factory path `%s'"), path);
> 
>    I'm not sure this is worth doing. There are a _lot_ of warnings
>    in GTK+, which are intended for the programmer, and considering
>    that someone programming with GTK+ already needs a bit of knowledge
>    of English, translating all the warnings for the programmer
>    seems to put an undue burden on the translator.

Agreed.

	Jeff