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Translation

Translation files are found in the po/ directory.

i18n not released yet

Kano OS is not fully i18n-aware and locales are not installed for end users, yet. You can translate this application, but as of now, users will still see the default English message strings.

How to add a new translation

In this example, we're going to add a French translation:

# install your target locale `fr_FR.utf8` with:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

cd po/
# create messages.pot
make messages

# create fr.po from messages.pot:
msginit -l fr_FR.utf8

# now use your favourite editor to translate fr.po

# build locale files:
make

# test kano-updater-gui with translated message strings:
cd ..
LC_ALL=fr_FR.utf8 ./bin/kano-updater-gui

# test with 1 through 7 for the 7 stages of kano-updater-gui
echo -n 1 > /tmp/updater-progress

How to make sure your code is i18n-aware

Add the gettext _() macro to all the user-visible message strings in your Python or C code. List the Python source files that contain message strings in PYPOTFILES and the C source files in CPOTFILES.

If you added new message strings or made changes to existing ones, do make messages to keep the template file up-to-date.

After that, merge the existing translations with make update and ask your translators to update their translations.

gettext explained (in 20 seconds)

  • User-visible strings in the source are marked with a macro of your choice. Usually, it's _().
  • xgettext extracts these message strings from your sources and puts them into a template file.
  • This template file, usually named messages.pot, contains all user-visible strings of the project, but no translations.
  • Translators use msginit to copy the template file into a new portable object file for their language (explained above).
  • The translations are put into <lang>.po. It's a plain-text file format, you can use any text editor.
  • More convenient, specialized .po-editors and web-based tools such as Pootle exist, as well.
  • If your template file changes, use msgmerge to merge your existing translations with the new template, then re-translate the updated messages. Beware of msgmerge's "fuzzy" matches.
  • msgfmt converts a .po file into a binary message object file.
  • You don't link these .mo files with your application binary.
  • The .mo files are bundled alongside with your software as part of the distribution package.
  • During installation, the .mo files are copied into the system's locale directory, usually /usr/share/locale.
  • On startup, your application will look for the message object file that it needs for the current system locale.
  • The locale even allows you to provide region-specific translations, e.g. "colour" for en_UK vs "color" for en_US.
  • At runtime, all user-visible strings are being replaced with the translations.
  • If no message object was found for the system locale, the original strings will be shown.

To-Do

Pootle or Transifex integration.