GTK+ - 2.0 Localization Guide for GUI and Code both

Question

2.0 + MinGW32 + Windows platform + Netbeans IDE to create my application. i have created the front-end but now i need to add language selection option and i want auto translation and i m new to GTK so i want detailed help. i searched on google but i didn't found any help for doing it on windows so please help as soon as possible :( I have designed my layout using gtkBuilder.

I want to know the exact steps to follow to get it done...

Please highlight how to use gettext() or_() in windows and what are .po files and how to handle them...

** Sorry for bad English...

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 21 '11 at 11:41

0

Well, it depends on which Makefile generator you use. I don't think you're using autotools for that, so you may need to implement your own logic for that.

I did that on Windows/MinGW with CMake. The workflow you need to follow to produce your .po files is in the GNU gettext overview. Basically, xgettext parses your code to extract the strings you want to translate. You can pass it a keyword, generally "_" which identifies the _() macro used in your code to mark strings for translation. It will generate the .pot (PO template) files. You can then copy that file and rename it into a .po file, and translate the strings with tools like poedit.

The, you needs some mechanisms to update your po files. This uses msgmerge, that will merge your new .pot files with the existing .po files. It will add the new strings to translate, and comment out the strings that disappeared.

Unfortunately, this is all tied to your build system, so there'not one sigle way to do it. I used CMake, but you can use shell scripts or any system able to call a command and generate files.

Hope this helps.

answered Nov 21 '11 at 11:41

liberforce

11,189
37
48

Can you use bash to do that, or adding a bash dependency is forbidden ? – liberforce Nov 23 '11 at 14:44
yeah i can't use bash scripting :( – Waqar Ali Khan Nov 23 '11 at 16:37
Then I suppose you'll have to call xgettext, msgmerge, msgfmt from a .bat script... – liberforce Nov 24 '11 at 00:33
Finally i got it all done through a very nice tutorial, thnx :) – Waqar Ali Khan Nov 24 '11 at 01:23
@ Waqar Ali Khan, seeing as how this seems to be the answer, why don't you be a pal and accept it as it? ;) – josephthomas Jan 21 '12 at 01:13

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:08

cat >hellogt.cxx <<EOF
// hellogt.cxx
#include <libintl.h>
#include <locale.h>
#include <iostream>
int main (){
    setlocale(LC_ALL, "");
    bindtextdomain("hellogt", ".");
    textdomain( "hellogt");
    std::cout << gettext("hello, world!") << std::endl;
}
EOF
g++ -o hellogt hellogt.cxx
xgettext --package-name hellogt --package-version 1.2 --default-domain hellogt --output hellogt.pot hellogt.cxx
msginit --no-translator --locale es_MX --output-file hellogt_spanish.po --input hellogt.pot
sed --in-place hellogt_spanish.po --expression='/"hello, world!"/,/#: / s/""/"hola mundo"/'
mkdir --parents ./es_MX.utf8/LC_MESSAGES
msgfmt --check --verbose --output-file ./es_MX.utf8/LC_MESSAGES/hellogt.mo hellogt_spanish.po
LANGUAGE=es_MX.utf8 ./hellogt

Here is a description of the files created by the above:

hellogt.cxx         C++ source file
hellogt             Executable image
hellogt.pot         Extracted text from C++ source file (portable object template)
hellogt_spanish.po  Modified text for Spanish with translations added (using sed)
es_MX.utf8/
 LC_MESSAGES/
   hellogt.mo       Binary translated text for Spanish used at run-time

SOURCE: Complete C++ i18n gettext() "hello world" example

Well, the "sed" step is mostly useless, the translations are generally done using an external tool, like poedit, or by editing manually the .po file. The gettext call in hellogt.cxx is also replaced by a call to the \_() macro, who hides it (and the --keyword=_ option is then passed to xgettext to recognize the strings marked for translation). _T() is used for strings that should not be translated. — liberforce, Nov 24 '11 at 13:23

GTK+ - 2.0 Localization Guide for GUI and Code both

2 Answers2