[GRASS5] i18n

[Glynn Clements]

Jean-Denis Giguere wrote:

> I see many attempts of translation of doc, tcl/tk gui , but don't see a 
> lot of things lead to term.
> 
> Does GRASS community already think about having structure for i18n ? I 
> think it could be helpful.
> 
> Wha do you think about using PO files for all translation tasks. It 
> seems to work great in other project.

Alex Shevlakov has previously done some I18N work on GRASS. The
necessary infrastructure is present, in terms of the --with-nls
configure switch, the glocale.h header, and the _() macro which it
defines. AFAICT, this only works in 5.0/5.3 at present.

So far, the PostgreSQL modules, libgis, libraster, s.surf.rst and
v.digit have been modified to use gettext, while tcltkgrass and the
startup messages have been translated directly.

Currently, only Russian translations are included. See the locale
directory for the templates and translated catalogues.

The main issue with internationalising GRASS is that it requires
ongoing effort; you can't just do it once and forget about it. 
Whenever code is updated, the developers will typically only update or
add English text. Translators need to continually watch for such
changes and update the message catalogues accordingly.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn.clements at virgin.net>