| [ << ] | jpayne@68:[ >> ] | jpayne@68:jpayne@68: | jpayne@68: | jpayne@68: | jpayne@68: | jpayne@68: | [Top] | jpayne@68:[Contents] | jpayne@68:[Index] | jpayne@68:[ ? ] | jpayne@68:
When starting a new translation, the translator creates a file called jpayne@68: ‘LANG.po’, as a copy of the ‘package.pot’ template jpayne@68: file with modifications in the initial comments (at the beginning of the file) jpayne@68: and in the header entry (the first entry, near the beginning of the file). jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:The easiest way to do so is by use of the ‘msginit’ program. jpayne@68: For example: jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:$ cd PACKAGE-VERSION jpayne@68: $ cd po jpayne@68: $ msginit jpayne@68: |
The alternative way is to do the copy and modifications by hand. jpayne@68: To do so, the translator copies ‘package.pot’ to jpayne@68: ‘LANG.po’. Then she modifies the initial comments and jpayne@68: the header entry of this file. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68: jpayne@68: jpayne@68: jpayne@68: jpayne@68:msginit Program msginit [option] jpayne@68: |
The msginit program creates a new PO file, initializing the meta
jpayne@68: information with values from the user's environment.
jpayne@68:
Here are more details. The following header fields of a PO file are jpayne@68: automatically filled, when possible. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:The value is guessed from the configure script or any other files
jpayne@68: in the current directory.
jpayne@68:
The value is taken from the PO-Creation-Data in the input POT
jpayne@68: file, or the current date is used.
jpayne@68:
The value is taken from user's password file entry and the mailer jpayne@68: configuration files. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:These values are set according to the current locale and the predefined jpayne@68: list of translation teams. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:These values are set according to the content of the POT file and the jpayne@68: current locale. If the POT file contains charset=UTF-8, it means that jpayne@68: the POT file contains non-ASCII characters, and we keep the UTF-8 jpayne@68: encoding. Otherwise, when the POT file is plain ASCII, we use the jpayne@68: locale's encoding. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:The value is first looked up from the embedded table. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:As an experimental feature, you can instruct msginit to use the
jpayne@68: information from Unicode CLDR, by setting the GETTEXTCLDRDIR
jpayne@68: environment variable. The program will look for a file named
jpayne@68: common/supplemental/plurals.xml under that directory. You can
jpayne@68: get the CLDR data from http://cldr.unicode.org/.
jpayne@68:
Input POT file. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:If no inputfile is given, the current directory is searched for the jpayne@68: POT file. If it is ‘-’, standard input is read. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68: jpayne@68: jpayne@68:Write output to specified PO file. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:If no output file is given, it depends on the ‘--locale’ option or the jpayne@68: user's locale setting. If it is ‘-’, the results are written to jpayne@68: standard output. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68: jpayne@68: jpayne@68:Assume the input file is a Java ResourceBundle in Java .properties
jpayne@68: syntax, not in PO file syntax.
jpayne@68:
Assume the input file is a NeXTstep/GNUstep localized resource file in
jpayne@68: .strings syntax, not in PO file syntax.
jpayne@68:
Set target locale. ll should be a language code, and CC should
jpayne@68: be a country code. The optional part .encoding specifies the encoding
jpayne@68: of the locale; most often this part is .UTF-8.
jpayne@68: The command ‘locale -a’ can be used to output a list
jpayne@68: of all installed locales. The default is the user's locale setting.
jpayne@68:
Declares that the PO file will not have a human translator and is instead jpayne@68: automatically generated. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:Specify whether or when to use colors and other text attributes.
jpayne@68: See The --color option for details.
jpayne@68:
Specify the CSS style rule file to use for --color.
jpayne@68: See The --style option for details.
jpayne@68:
Write out a Java ResourceBundle in Java .properties syntax. Note
jpayne@68: that this file format doesn't support plural forms and silently drops
jpayne@68: obsolete messages.
jpayne@68:
Write out a NeXTstep/GNUstep localized resource file in .strings syntax.
jpayne@68: Note that this file format doesn't support plural forms.
jpayne@68:
Set the output page width. Long strings in the output files will be jpayne@68: split across multiple lines in order to ensure that each line's width jpayne@68: (= number of screen columns) is less or equal to the given number. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:Do not break long message lines. Message lines whose width exceeds the jpayne@68: output page width will not be split into several lines. Only file reference jpayne@68: lines which are wider than the output page width will be split. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:Display this help and exit. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:Output version information and exit. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:The initial comments "SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE", "YEAR" and jpayne@68: "FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR" ought to be replaced by sensible jpayne@68: information. This can be done in any text editor; if Emacs is used jpayne@68: and it switched to PO mode automatically (because it has recognized jpayne@68: the file's suffix), you can disable it by typing M-x fundamental-mode. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:Modifying the header entry can already be done using PO mode: in Emacs, jpayne@68: type M-x po-mode RET and then RET again to start editing the jpayne@68: entry. You should fill in the following fields. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:This is the name and version of the package. Fill it in if it has not
jpayne@68: already been filled in by xgettext.
jpayne@68:
This has already been filled in by xgettext. It contains an email
jpayne@68: address or URL where you can report bugs in the untranslated strings:
jpayne@68:
This has already been filled in by xgettext.
jpayne@68:
You don't need to fill this in. It will be filled by the PO file editor jpayne@68: when you save the file. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:Fill in your name and email address (without double quotes). jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:Fill in the English name of the language, and the email address or jpayne@68: homepage URL of the language team you are part of. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:Before starting a translation, it is a good idea to get in touch with jpayne@68: your translation team, not only to make sure you don't do duplicated work, jpayne@68: but also to coordinate difficult linguistic issues. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68: jpayne@68:In the Free Translation Project, each translation team has its own mailing jpayne@68: list. The up-to-date list of teams can be found at the Free Translation jpayne@68: Project's homepage, https://translationproject.org/, in the "Teams" jpayne@68: area. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:Fill in the language code of the language. This can be in one of three jpayne@68: forms: jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:The naming convention ‘ll_CC’ is also the way locales are jpayne@68: named on systems based on GNU libc. But there are three important differences: jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:So, if your locale name is ‘de_DE.UTF-8’, the language specification in jpayne@68: PO files is just ‘de’. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:Replace ‘CHARSET’ with the character encoding used for your language,
jpayne@68: in your locale, or UTF-8. This field is needed for correct operation of the
jpayne@68: msgmerge and msgfmt programs, as well as for users whose
jpayne@68: locale's character encoding differs from yours (see How to specify the output character set gettext uses).
jpayne@68:
You get the character encoding of your locale by running the shell command jpayne@68: ‘locale charmap’. If the result is ‘C’ or ‘ANSI_X3.4-1968’, jpayne@68: which is equivalent to ‘ASCII’ (= ‘US-ASCII’), it means that your jpayne@68: locale is not correctly configured. In this case, ask your translation jpayne@68: team which charset to use. ‘ASCII’ is not usable for any language jpayne@68: except Latin. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68: jpayne@68:Because the PO files must be portable to operating systems with less advanced
jpayne@68: internationalization facilities, the character encodings that can be used
jpayne@68: are limited to those supported by both GNU libc and GNU
jpayne@68: libiconv. These are:
jpayne@68: ASCII, ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-2, ISO-8859-3,
jpayne@68: ISO-8859-4, ISO-8859-5, ISO-8859-6, ISO-8859-7,
jpayne@68: ISO-8859-8, ISO-8859-9, ISO-8859-13, ISO-8859-14,
jpayne@68: ISO-8859-15,
jpayne@68: KOI8-R, KOI8-U, KOI8-T,
jpayne@68: CP850, CP866, CP874,
jpayne@68: CP932, CP949, CP950, CP1250, CP1251,
jpayne@68: CP1252, CP1253, CP1254, CP1255, CP1256,
jpayne@68: CP1257, GB2312, EUC-JP, EUC-KR, EUC-TW,
jpayne@68: BIG5, BIG5-HKSCS, GBK, GB18030, SHIFT_JIS,
jpayne@68: JOHAB, TIS-620, VISCII, GEORGIAN-PS, UTF-8.
jpayne@68:
In the GNU system, the following encodings are frequently used for the jpayne@68: corresponding languages. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68: jpayne@68:ISO-8859-1 for
jpayne@68: Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Cornish, Danish, Dutch,
jpayne@68: English, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Galician, German,
jpayne@68: Greenlandic, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Malay, Manx,
jpayne@68: Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Uzbek,
jpayne@68: Walloon,
jpayne@68: ISO-8859-2 for
jpayne@68: Bosnian, Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak,
jpayne@68: Slovenian,
jpayne@68: ISO-8859-3 for Maltese,
jpayne@68: ISO-8859-5 for Macedonian, Serbian,
jpayne@68: ISO-8859-6 for Arabic,
jpayne@68: ISO-8859-7 for Greek,
jpayne@68: ISO-8859-8 for Hebrew,
jpayne@68: ISO-8859-9 for Turkish,
jpayne@68: ISO-8859-13 for Latvian, Lithuanian, Maori,
jpayne@68: ISO-8859-14 for Welsh,
jpayne@68: ISO-8859-15 for
jpayne@68: Basque, Catalan, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Irish,
jpayne@68: Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Walloon,
jpayne@68: KOI8-R for Russian,
jpayne@68: KOI8-U for Ukrainian,
jpayne@68: KOI8-T for Tajik,
jpayne@68: CP1251 for Bulgarian, Belarusian,
jpayne@68: GB2312, GBK, GB18030
jpayne@68: for simplified writing of Chinese,
jpayne@68: BIG5, BIG5-HKSCS
jpayne@68: for traditional writing of Chinese,
jpayne@68: EUC-JP for Japanese,
jpayne@68: EUC-KR for Korean,
jpayne@68: TIS-620 for Thai,
jpayne@68: GEORGIAN-PS for Georgian,
jpayne@68: UTF-8 for any language, including those listed above.
jpayne@68: When single quote characters or double quote characters are used in jpayne@68: translations for your language, and your locale's encoding is one of the jpayne@68: ISO-8859-* charsets, it is best if you create your PO files in UTF-8 jpayne@68: encoding, instead of your locale's encoding. This is because in UTF-8 jpayne@68: the real quote characters can be represented (single quote characters: jpayne@68: U+2018, U+2019, double quote characters: U+201C, U+201D), whereas none of jpayne@68: ISO-8859-* charsets has them all. Users in UTF-8 locales will see the jpayne@68: real quote characters, whereas users in ISO-8859-* locales will see the jpayne@68: vertical apostrophe and the vertical double quote instead (because that's jpayne@68: what the character set conversion will transliterate them to). jpayne@68:
jpayne@68: jpayne@68:To enter such quote characters under X11, you can change your keyboard
jpayne@68: mapping using the xmodmap program. The X11 names of the quote
jpayne@68: characters are "leftsinglequotemark", "rightsinglequotemark",
jpayne@68: "leftdoublequotemark", "rightdoublequotemark", "singlelowquotemark",
jpayne@68: "doublelowquotemark".
jpayne@68:
Note that only recent versions of GNU Emacs support the UTF-8 encoding: jpayne@68: Emacs 20 with Mule-UCS, and Emacs 21. As of January 2001, XEmacs doesn't jpayne@68: support the UTF-8 encoding. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:The character encoding name can be written in either upper or lower case. jpayne@68: Usually upper case is preferred. jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:Set this to 8bit.
jpayne@68:
This field is optional. It is only needed if the PO file has plural forms. jpayne@68: You can find them by searching for the ‘msgid_plural’ keyword. The jpayne@68: format of the plural forms field is described in Additional functions for plural forms and jpayne@68: Translating plural forms. jpayne@68:
| [ << ] | jpayne@68:[ >> ] | jpayne@68:jpayne@68: | jpayne@68: | jpayne@68: | jpayne@68: | jpayne@68: | [Top] | jpayne@68:[Contents] | jpayne@68:[Index] | jpayne@68:[ ? ] | jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:
jpayne@68: This document was generated by Bruno Haible on February, 21 2024 using texi2html 1.78a.
jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:
jpayne@68:
jpayne@68: