i18n.Readme

How to make a i18n translation:

- Needed: xgettext, msginit, msgfmt 
I'm not know if this is possible on other OSes, this procedure should work on
GNU/Linux.


On the src dir, extract the translatable lines from the source and
glade files:
    xgettext -k_ -kN_ -o voacapgui.pot *.glade *.py
    
This lets there a voacapgui.pot file (a poTemplate).

For any new translator, a .po file is needed. To generate this file there
exists two possibilities:
- Run msginit on the voacapgui.pot file to get the xx_XX.po file, in the
  environment of the translator:
     msginit -i voacapgui.pot  
  or setting a proper LC_ALL variable instead:
     LC_ALL=es_ES msginit -i voacapgui.pot

  For example, if the translator locale environment is es_ES, then a es_ES.po
  file will be created, which will be a copy of the voacapgui.pot file but with
  all the needed relevant fields in the file header already completed.

The other way is obviously to copy the voacapgui.pot over a .po file and
complete all the data by hand.

For updating an existing .po file, use msgmerge:
    % msgmerge -o xx_XX.po existingfile.po newfile.pot 

Whit the .po file the translator work is to edit every string on it with a
translator editor or a normal text editor.

The translated .po file is then converted to the machine readable binary format
.mo with msgfmt:
     msgfmt es_ES.po -o po/es_ES/LC_MESSAGES/voacapgui.mo

That's it, to test the translation:
     LC_ALL=es_ES python voacapgui.py

-- FMM, 2009-11-22