1<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML i18n//EN"> 2<!-- 3 Copyright (C) 2004-2005, 2012 Gora Mohanty. 4 Written by Gora Mohanty <gora_mohanty@yahoo.co.in>, 2004. 5 6 This manual is covered by the GNU FDL. 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Mohanty</STRONG></P> 55<P ALIGN="CENTER"><STRONG>Revision 0.3: 24 July 2004</STRONG></P> 56</DIV> 57 58<H3>Abstract:</H3> 59<DIV CLASS="ABSTRACT"> 60 The use of the GNU <TT>gettext</TT> utilities to implement support for native 61languages is described here. Though, the language to be supported is 62considered to be Oriya, the method is generally applicable. Likewise, while 63Linux was used as the platform here, any system using GNU <TT>gettext</TT> should work 64in a similar fashion. 65 66<P> 67We go through a step-by-step description of how to make on-screen messages 68from a toy program to appear in Oriya instead of English; starting from the 69programming and ending with the user's viewpoint. Some discussion is also made 70of how to go about the task of translation. 71</DIV> 72<P> 73<H1><A NAME="SECTION00010000000000000000"> 74Introduction</A> 75</H1> 76Currently, both commercial and free computer software is typically written and 77documented in English. Till recently, little effort was expended towards 78allowing them to interact with the user in languages other than English, thus 79leaving the non-English speaking world at a disadvantage. However, that 80changed with the release of the GNU <TT>gettext</TT> utilities, and nowadays most GNU 81programs are written within a framework that allows easy translation of the 82program message to languages other than English. Provided that translations 83are available, the language used by the program to interact with the user can 84be set at the time of running it. <TT>gettext</TT> manages to achieve this seemingly 85miraculous task in a manner that simplifies the work of both the programmer 86and the translator, and, more importantly, allows them to work independently 87of each other. 88 89<P> 90This article describes how to support native languages under a system using 91the GNU <TT>gettext</TT> utilities. While it should be applicable to other versions of 92<TT>gettext</TT>, the one actually used for the examples here is version 930.12.1. Another system, called <TT>catgets</TT>, described in the X/Open 94Portability Guide, is also in use, but we shall not discuss that here. 95 96<P> 97 98<H1><A NAME="SECTION00020000000000000000"> 99A simple example</A> 100</H1> 101<A NAME="sec:simple"></A>Our first example of using <TT>gettext</TT> will be the good old Hello World program, 102whose sole function is to print the phrase “Hello, world!” to the terminal. 103The internationalized version of this program might be saved in hello.c as: 104<PRE> 1051 #include <libintl.h> 1062 #include <locale.h> 1073 #include <stdio.h> 1084 #include <stdlib.h> 1095 int main(void) 1106 { 1117 setlocale( LC_ALL, "" ); 1128 bindtextdomain( "hello", "/usr/share/locale" ); 1139 textdomain( "hello" ); 11410 printf( gettext( "Hello, world!\n" ) ); 11511 exit(0); 11612 } 117</PRE> 118Of course, a real program would check the return values of the functions and 119try to deal with any errors, but we have omitted that part of the code for 120clarity. Compile as usual with <TT>gcc -o hello hello.c</TT>. The program should 121be linked to the GNU libintl library, but as this is part of the GNU C 122library, this is done automatically for you under Linux, and other systems 123using glibc. 124 125<H2><A NAME="SECTION00021000000000000000"> 126The programmer's viewpoint</A> 127</H2> 128 As expected, when the <TT>hello</TT> executable is run under the default locale 129(usually the C locale) it prints “Hello, world!” in the terminal. Besides 130some initial setup work, the only additional burden faced by the programmer is 131to replace any string to be printed with <TT>gettext(string)</TT>, i.e., to 132instead pass the string as an argument to the <TT>gettext</TT> function. For lazy 133people like myself, the amount of extra typing can be reduced even further by 134a CPP macro, e.g., put this at the beginning of the source code file, 135<PRE> 136 #define _(STRING) gettext(STRING) 137</PRE> 138and then use <TT>_(string)</TT> instead of <TT>gettext(string)</TT>. 139 140<P> 141Let us dissect the program line-by-line. 142 143<OL> 144<LI><TT>locale.h</TT> defines C data structures used to hold locale 145 information, and is needed by the <TT>setlocale</TT> function. <TT>libintl.h</TT> 146 prototypes the GNU text utilities functions, and is needed here by 147 <TT>bindtextdomain</TT>, <TT>gettext</TT>, and <TT>textdomain</TT>. 148</LI> 149<LI>The call to <TT>setlocale</TT> () on line 7, with LC_ALL as the first argument 150 and an empty string as the second one, initializes the entire current locale 151 of the program as per environment variables set by the user. In other words, 152 the program locale is initialized to match that of the user. For details see 153 “man <TT>setlocale</TT>.” 154</LI> 155<LI>The <TT>bindtextdomain</TT> function on line 8 sets the base directory for the 156 message catalogs for a given message domain. A message domain is a set of 157 translatable messages, with every software package typically having its own 158 domain. Here, we have used “hello” as the name of the message domain for 159 our toy program. As the second argument, /usr/share/locale, is the default 160 system location for message catalogs, what we are saying here is that we are 161 going to place the message catalog in the default system directory. Thus, we 162 could have dispensed with the call to <TT>bindtextdomain</TT> here, and this 163 function is useful only if the message catalogs are installed in a 164 non-standard place, e.g., a packaged software distribution might have 165 the catalogs under a po/ directory under its own main directory. See “man 166 <TT>bindtextdomain</TT>” for details. 167</LI> 168<LI>The <TT>textdomain</TT> call on line 9 sets the message domain of the current 169 program to “hello,” i.e., the name that we are using for our example 170 program. “man textdomain” will give usage details for the function. 171</LI> 172<LI>Finally, on line 10, we have replaced what would normally have been, 173<PRE> 174 printf( "Hello, world!\n" ); 175</PRE> 176with, 177<PRE> 178 printf( gettext( "Hello, world!\n" ) ); 179</PRE> 180(If you are unfamiliar with C, the <!-- MATH 181 $\backslash$ 182 --> 183<SPAN CLASS="MATH">\</SPAN>n at the end of the string 184produces a newline at the end of the output.) This simple modification to all 185translatable strings allows the translator to work independently from the 186programmer. <TT>gettextize</TT> eases the task of the programmer in adapting a 187package to use GNU <TT>gettext</TT> for the first time, or to upgrade to a newer 188version of <TT>gettext</TT>. 189</LI> 190</OL> 191 192<H2><A NAME="SECTION00022000000000000000"> 193Extracting translatable strings</A> 194</H2> 195 Now, it is time to extract the strings to be translated from the program 196source code. This is achieved with <TT>xgettext</TT>, which can be invoked as follows: 197<PRE><FONT color="red"> 198 xgettext -d hello -o hello.pot hello.c 199</FONT></PRE> 200This processes the source code in hello.c, saving the output in hello.pot (the 201argument to the -o option). 202The message domain for the program should be specified as the argument 203to the -d option, and should match the domain specified in the call to 204<TT>textdomain</TT> (on line 9 of the program source). Other details on how to use 205<TT>gettext</TT> can be found from “man gettext.” 206 207<P> 208A .pot (portable object template) file is used as the basis for translating 209program messages into any language. To start translation, one can simply copy 210hello.pot to oriya.po (this preserves the template file for later translation 211into a different language). However, the preferred way to do this is by 212use of the <TT>msginit</TT> program, which takes care of correctly setting up some 213default values, 214<PRE><FONT color="red"> 215 msginit -l or_IN -o oriya.po -i hello.pot 216</FONT></PRE> 217Here, the -l option defines the locale (an Oriya locale should have been 218installed on your system), and the -i and -o options define the input and 219output files, respectively. If there is only a single .pot file in the 220directory, it will be used as the input file, and the -i option can be 221omitted. For me, the oriya.po file produced by <TT>msginit</TT> would look like: 222<PRE> 223 # Oriya translations for PACKAGE package. 224 # Copyright (C) 2004 THE PACKAGE'S COPYRIGHT HOLDER 225 # This file is distributed under the same license as the PACKAGE package. 226 # Gora Mohanty <gora_mohanty@yahoo.co.in>, 2004. 227 # 228 msgid "" 229 msgstr "" 230 "Project-Id-Version: PACKAGE VERSION\n" 231 "Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: \n" 232 "POT-Creation-Date: 2004-06-22 02:22+0530\n" 233 "PO-Revision-Date: 2004-06-22 02:38+0530\n" 234 "Last-Translator: Gora Mohanty <gora_mohanty@yahoo.co.in>\n" 235 "Language-Team: Oriya\n" 236 "MIME-Version: 1.0\n" 237 "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n" 238 "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n" 239 240 #: hello.c:10 241 msgid "Hello, world!\n" 242 msgstr "" 243</PRE> 244<TT>msginit</TT> prompted for my email address, and probably obtained my real name 245from the system password file. It also filled in values such as the revision 246date, language, character set, presumably using information from the or_IN 247locale. 248 249<P> 250It is important to respect the format of the entries in the .po (portable 251object) file. Each entry has the following structure: 252<PRE> 253 WHITE-SPACE 254 # TRANSLATOR-COMMENTS 255 #. AUTOMATIC-COMMENTS 256 #: REFERENCE... 257 #, FLAG... 258 msgid UNTRANSLATED-STRING 259 msgstr TRANSLATED-STRING 260</PRE> 261where, the initial white-space (spaces, tabs, newlines,...), and all 262comments might or might not exist for a particular entry. Comment lines start 263with a '#' as the first character, and there are two kinds: (i) manually 264added translator comments, that have some white-space immediately following the 265'#,' and (ii) automatic comments added and maintained by the <TT>gettext</TT> tools, 266with a non-white-space character after the '#.' The <TT>msgid</TT> line contains 267the untranslated (English) string, if there is one for that PO file entry, and 268the <TT>msgstr</TT> line is where the translated string is to be entered. More on 269this later. For details on the format of PO files see gettext::Basics::PO 270Files:: in the Emacs info-browser (see Appdx. <A HREF="#sec:emacs-info">A</A> for an 271introduction to using the info-browser in Emacs). 272 273<H2><A NAME="SECTION00023000000000000000"> 274Making translations</A> 275</H2> 276 The oriya.po file can then be edited to add the translated Oriya 277strings. While the editing can be carried out in any editor if one is careful 278to follow the PO file format, there are several editors that ease the task of 279editing PO files, among them being po-mode in Emacs, <TT>kbabel</TT>, gtranslator, 280poedit, etc. Appdx. <A HREF="#sec:pofile-editors">B</A> describes features of some of 281these editors. 282 283<P> 284The first thing to do is fill in the comments at the beginning and the header 285entry, parts of which have already been filled in by <TT>msginit</TT>. The lines in 286the header entry are pretty much self-explanatory, and details can be found in 287the gettext::Creating::Header Entry:: info node. After that, the remaining 288work consists of typing the Oriya text that is to serve as translations for 289the corresponding English string. For the <TT>msgstr</TT> line in each of the 290remaining entries, add the translated Oriya text between the double quotes; 291the translation corresponding to the English phrase in the <TT>msgid</TT> string 292for the entry. For example, for the phrase “Hello world!<!-- MATH 293 $\backslash$ 294 --> 295<SPAN CLASS="MATH">\</SPAN>n” in 296oriya.po, we could enter “ନମସ୍କାର<!-- MATH 297 $\backslash$ 298 --> 299<SPAN CLASS="MATH">\</SPAN>n”. The final 300oriya.po file might look like: 301<PRE> 302 # Oriya translations for hello example package. 303 # Copyright (C) 2004 Gora Mohanty 304 # This file is distributed under the same license as the hello example package. 305 # Gora Mohanty <gora_mohanty@yahoo.co.in>, 2004. 306 # 307 msgid "" 308 msgstr "" 309 "Project-Id-Version: oriya\n" 310 "Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: \n" 311 "POT-Creation-Date: 2004-06-22 02:22+0530\n" 312 "PO-Revision-Date: 2004-06-22 10:54+0530\n" 313 "Last-Translator: Gora Mohanty <gora_mohanty@yahoo.co.in>\n" 314 "Language-Team: Oriya\n" 315 "MIME-Version: 1.0\n" 316 "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n" 317 "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n" 318 "X-Generator: KBabel 1.3\n" 319 320 #: hello.c:10 321 msgid "Hello, world!\n" 322 msgstr "ନମସ୍କାର\n" 323</PRE> 324 325<P> 326For editing PO files, I have found the <TT>kbabel</TT> editor suits me the best. The 327only problem is that while Oriya text can be entered directly into <TT>kbabel</TT> 328using the xkb Oriya keyboard layouts [<A 329 HREF="memo.html#xkb-oriya-layout">1</A>] and the entries 330are saved properly, the text is not displayed correctly in the <TT>kbabel</TT> window 331if it includes conjuncts. Emacs po-mode is a little restrictive, but strictly 332enforces conformance with the PO file format. The main problem with it is that 333it does not seem currently possible to edit Oriya text in Emacs. <TT>yudit</TT> 334is the best at editing Oriya text, but does not ensure that the PO file format 335is followed. You can play around a bit with these editors to find one that 336suits your personal preferences. One possibility might be to first edit the 337header entry with <TT>kbabel</TT> or Emacs po-mode, and then use <TT>yudit</TT> to enter 338the Oriya text on the <TT>msgstr</TT> lines. 339 340<H2><A NAME="SECTION00024000000000000000"> 341Message catalogs</A> 342</H2> 343 <A NAME="sec:catalog"></A>After completing the translations in the oriya.po file, it must be compiled to 344a binary format that can be quickly loaded by the <TT>gettext</TT> tools. To do that, 345use: 346<PRE><FONT color="red"> 347 msgfmt -c -v -o hello.mo oriya.po 348</FONT></PRE> 349The -c option does detailed checking of the PO file format, -v makes the 350program verbose, and the output filename is given by the argument to the -o 351option. Note that the base of the output filename should match the message 352domain given in the first arguments to <TT>bindtextdomain</TT> and <TT>textdomain</TT> on 353lines 8 and 9 of the example program in Sec. <A HREF="#sec:simple">2</A>. The .mo 354(machine object) file should be stored in the location whose base directory is 355given by the second argument to <TT>bindtextdomain</TT>. The final location of the 356file will be in the sub-directory LL/LC_MESSAGES or LL_CC/LC_MESSAGES under 357the base directory, where LL stands for a language, and CC for a country. For 358example, as we have chosen the standard location, /usr/share/locale, for our 359base directory, and for us the language and country strings are “or” and 360“IN,” respectively, we will place hello.mo in /usr/share/locale/or_IN. Note 361that you will need super-user privilege to copy hello.mo to this system 362directory. Thus, 363<PRE><FONT color="red"> 364 mkdir -p /usr/share/locale/or_IN/LC_MESSAGES 365 cp hello.mo /usr/share/locale/or_IN/LC_MESSAGES 366</FONT></PRE> 367 368<H2><A NAME="SECTION00025000000000000000"> 369The user's viewpoint</A> 370</H2> 371 Once the message catalogs have been properly installed, any user on the system 372can use the Oriya version of the Hello World program, provided an Oriya locale 373is available. First, change your locale with, 374<PRE><FONT color="red"> 375 echo $LANG 376 export LANG=or_IN 377</FONT></PRE> 378The first statement shows you the current setting of your locale (this is 379usually en_US, and you will need it to reset the default locale at the end), 380while the second one sets it to an Oriya locale. 381 382<P> 383A Unicode-capable terminal emulator is needed to view Oriya output 384directly. The new versions of both gnome-terminal and konsole (the KDE 385terminal emulator) are Unicode-aware. I will focus on gnome-terminal as it 386seems to have better support for internationalization. gnome-terminal needs to 387be told that the bytes arriving are UTF-8 encoded multibyte sequences. This 388can be done by (a) choosing Terminal <TT>-></TT> Character Coding <TT>-></TT> 389Unicode (UTF-8), or (b) typing “/bin/echo -n -e 390'<!-- MATH 391 $\backslash$ 392 --> 393<SPAN CLASS="MATH">\</SPAN>033%<!-- MATH 394 $\backslash$ 395 --> 396<SPAN CLASS="MATH">\</SPAN>G'” in the terminal, or (c) by running 397/bin/unicode_start. Likewise, you can revert to the default locale by (a) 398choosing Terminal <TT>-></TT> Character Coding <TT>-></TT> Current Locale 399(ISO-8859-1), or (b) “/bin/echo -n -e '<!-- MATH 400 $\backslash$ 401 --> 402<SPAN CLASS="MATH">\</SPAN>033%<!-- MATH 403 $\backslash$ 404 --> 405<SPAN CLASS="MATH">\</SPAN>@',” or 406(c) by running /bin/unicode_stop. Now, running the example program (after 407compiling with gcc as described in Sec. <A HREF="#sec:simple">2</A>) with, 408<PRE><FONT color="red"> 409 ./hello 410</FONT></PRE> 411should give you output in Oriya. Please note that conjuncts will most likely 412be displayed with a “halant” as the terminal probably does not render Indian 413language fonts correctly. Also, as most terminal emulators assume fixed-width 414fonts, the results are hardly likely to be aesthetically appealing. 415 416<P> 417An alternative is to save the program output in a file, and view it with 418<TT>yudit</TT> which will render the glyphs correctly. Thus, 419<PRE><FONT color="red"> 420 ./hello > junk 421 yudit junk 422</FONT></PRE> 423Do not forget to reset the locale before resuming usual work in the 424terminal. Else, your English characters might look funny. 425 426<P> 427While all this should give the average user some pleasure in being able to see 428Oriya output from a program without a whole lot of work, it should be kept in 429mind that we are still far from our desired goal. Hopefully, one day the 430situation will be such that rather than deriving special pleasure from it, 431users take it for granted that Oriya should be available and are upset 432otherwise. 433 434<P> 435 436<H1><A NAME="SECTION00030000000000000000"> 437Adding complications: program upgrade</A> 438</H1> 439The previous section presented a simple example of how Oriya language support 440could be added to a C program. Like all programs, we might now wish to further 441enhance it. For example, we could include a greeting to the user by adding 442another <TT>printf</TT> statement after the first one. Our new hello.c source 443code might look like this: 444<PRE> 4451 #include <libintl.h> 4462 #include <locale.h> 4473 #include <stdio.h> 4484 #include <stdlib.h> 4495 int main(void) 4506 { 4517 setlocale( LC_ALL, "" ); 4528 bindtextdomain( "hello", "/usr/share/locale" ); 4539 textdomain( "hello" ); 45410 printf( gettext( "Hello, world!\n" ) ); 45511 printf( gettext( "How are you\n" ) ); 45612 exit(0); 45713 } 458</PRE> 459For such a small change, it would be simple enough to just repeat the above 460cycle of extracting the relevant English text, translating it to Oriya, and 461preparing a new message catalog. We can even simplify the work by cutting and 462pasting most of the old oriya.po file into the new one. However, real programs 463will have thousands of such strings, and we would like to be able to translate 464only the changed strings, and have the <TT>gettext</TT> utilities handle the drudgery 465of combining the new translations with the old ones. This is indeed possible. 466 467<H2><A NAME="SECTION00031000000000000000"> 468Merging old and new translations</A> 469</H2> 470 As before, extract the translatable strings from hello.c to a new portable 471object template file, hello-new.pot, using <TT>xgettext</TT>, 472<PRE><FONT color="red"> 473 xgettext -d hello -o hello-new.pot hello.c 474</FONT></PRE> 475Now, we use a new program, <TT>msgmerge</TT>, to merge the existing .po file with 476translations into the new template file, viz., 477<PRE><FONT color="red"> 478 msgmerge -U oriya.po hello-new.pot 479</FONT></PRE> 480The -U option updates the existing 481.po file, oriya.po. We could have chosen to instead create a new .po file by 482using “-o <SPAN CLASS="MATH"><</SPAN>filename<SPAN CLASS="MATH">></SPAN>” instead of -U. The updated .po file will still 483have the old translations embedded in it, and new entries with untranslated 484<TT>msgid</TT> lines. For us, the new lines in oriya.po will look like, 485<PRE> 486 #: hello.c:11 487 msgid "How are you?\n" 488 msgstr "" 489</PRE> 490For the new translation, we could use, “ଆପଣ 491କିପରି ଅଛନ୍ତି?” in 492place of the English phrase “How are you?” The updated oriya.po file, 493including the translation might look like: 494<PRE> 495 # Oriya translations for hello example package. 496 # Copyright (C) 2004 Gora Mohanty 497 # This file is distributed under the same license as the hello examplepackage. 498 # Gora Mohanty <gora_mohanty@yahoo.co.in>, 2004. 499 # 500 msgid "" 501 msgstr "" 502 "Project-Id-Version: oriya\n" 503 "Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: \n" 504 "POT-Creation-Date: 2004-06-23 14:30+0530\n" 505 "PO-Revision-Date: 2004-06-22 10:54+0530\n" 506 "Last-Translator: Gora Mohanty <gora_mohanty@yahoo.co.in>\n" 507 "Language-Team: Oriya\n" 508 "MIME-Version: 1.0\n" 509 "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n" 510 "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n" 511 "X-Generator: KBabel 1.3\n" 512 513 #: hello.c:10 514 msgid "Hello, world!\n" 515 msgstr "ନମସ୍କାର\n" 516 517 #: hello.c:11 518 msgid "How are you?\n" 519 msgstr "ଆପଣ କିପରି ଅଛନ୍ତି?\n" 520</PRE> 521 522<P> 523Compile oriya.po to a machine object file, and install in the appropriate 524place as in Sec. <A HREF="#sec:catalog">2.4</A>. Thus, 525<PRE><FONT color="red"> 526 msgfmt -c -v -o hello.mo oriya.po 527 mkdir -p /usr/share/locale/or_IN/LC_MESSAGES 528 cp hello.mo /usr/share/locale/or_IN/LC_MESSAGES 529</FONT></PRE> 530You can test the Oriya output as above, after recompiling hello.c and running 531it in an Oriya locale. 532 533<P> 534 535<H1><A NAME="SECTION00040000000000000000"> 536More about <TT>gettext</TT> </A> 537</H1> 538The GNU <TT>gettext</TT> info pages provide a well-organized and complete description 539of the <TT>gettext</TT> utilities and their usage for enabling Native Language 540Support. One should, at the very least, read the introductory material at 541gettext::Introduction::, and the suggested references in 542gettext::Conclusion::References::. Besides the <TT>gettext</TT> utilities described in 543this document, various other programs to manipulate .po files are discussed in 544gettext:Manipulating::. Finally, support for programming languages other than 545C/C++ is discussed in gettext::Programming Languages::. 546 547<P> 548 549<H1><A NAME="SECTION00050000000000000000"> 550The work of translation</A> 551</H1> 552 Besides the obvious program message strings that have been the sole focus of 553our discussion here, there are many other things that require translation, 554including GUI messages, command-line option strings, configuration files, 555program documentation, etc. Besides these obvious aspects, there are a 556significant number of programs and/or scripts that are automatically generated 557by other programs. These generated programs might also themselves require 558translation. So, in any effort to provide support for a given native language, 559carrying out the translation and keeping up with program updates becomes a 560major part of the undertaking, requiring a continuing commitment from the 561language team. A plan has been outlined for the Oriya localization 562project [<A 563 HREF="memo.html#url:oriya-trans-plan">2</A>]. 564 565<P> 566 567<H1><A NAME="SECTION00060000000000000000"> 568Acknowledgments</A> 569</H1> 570Extensive use has obviously been made of the GNU <TT>gettext</TT> manual in preparing 571this document. I have also been helped by an article in the Linux 572Journal [<A 573 HREF="memo.html#url:lj-translation">3</A>]. 574 575<P> 576This work is part of the project for enabling the use of Oriya under Linux. I 577thank my uncle, N. M. Pattnaik, for conceiving of the project. We have all 578benefited from the discussions amidst the group of people working on this 579project. On the particular issue of translation, the help of H. R. Pansari, 580A. Nayak, and M. Chand is much appreciated. 581 582<H1><A NAME="SECTION00070000000000000000"> 583The Emacs info browser</A> 584</H1> 585<A NAME="sec:emacs-info"></A>You can start up Emacs from the command-line by typing “emacs,” or “emacs 586<SPAN CLASS="MATH"><</SPAN>filename<SPAN CLASS="MATH">></SPAN>.” It can be started from the menu in some desktops, e.g., on 587my GNOME desktop, it is under Main Menu <TT>-></TT> Programming <TT>-></TT> 588Emacs. If you are unfamiliar with Emacs, a tutorial can be started by typing 589“C-h t” in an Emacs window, or from the Help item in the menubar at the 590top. Emacs makes extensive use of the Control (sometimes labelled as “CTRL” 591or “CTL”) and Meta (sometimes labelled as “Edit” or “Alt”) keys. In 592Emacs parlance, a hyphenated sequence, such as “C-h” means to press the 593Control and ‘h’ key simultaneously, while “C-h t” would mean to press the 594Control and ‘h’ key together, release them, and press the ‘t’ key. Similarly, 595“M-x” is used to indicate that the Meta and ‘x’ keys should be pressed at 596the same time. 597 598<P> 599The info browser can be started by typing “C-h i” in Emacs. The first time 600you do this, it will briefly list some commands available inside the info 601browser, and present you with a menu of major topics. Each menu item, or 602cross-reference is hyperlinked to the appropriate node, and you can visit that 603node either by moving the cursor to the item and pressing Enter, or by 604clicking on it with the middle mouse button. To get to the <TT>gettext</TT> menu items, 605you can either scroll down to the line, 606<PRE> 607 * gettext: (gettext). GNU gettext utilities. 608</PRE> 609and visit that node. Or, as it is several pages down, you can locate it using 610“I-search.” Type “C-s” to enter “I-search” which will then prompt you 611for a string in the mini-buffer at the bottom of the window. This is an 612incremental search, so that Emacs will keep moving you forward through the 613buffer as you are entering your search string. If you have reached the last 614occurrence of the search string in the current buffer, you will get a message 615saying “Failing I-search: ...” on pressing “C-s.” At that point, press 616“C-s” again to resume the search at the beginning of the buffer. Likewise, 617“C-r” incrementally searches backwards from the present location. 618 619<P> 620Info nodes are listed in this document with a “::” separator, so 621that one can go to the gettext::Creating::Header Entry:: by visiting the 622“gettext” node from the main info menu, navigating to the “Creating” 623node, and following that to the “Header Entry” node. 624 625<P> 626A stand-alone info browser, independent of Emacs, is also available on many 627systems. Thus, the <TT>gettext</TT> info page can also be accessed by typing 628“info gettext” in a terminal. <TT>xinfo</TT> is an X application serving as an 629info browser, so that if it is installed, typing “xinfo gettext” from the 630command line will open a new browser window with the <TT>gettext</TT> info page. 631 632<P> 633 634<H1><A NAME="SECTION00080000000000000000"> 635PO file editors</A> 636</H1> 637<A NAME="sec:pofile-editors"></A>While the <TT>yudit</TT> editor is adequate for our present purposes, and we are 638planning on using that as it is platform-independent, and currently the best 639at rendering Oriya. This section describes some features of some editors that 640are specialized for editing PO files under Linux. This is still work in 641progress, as I am in the process of trying out different editors before 642settling on one. The ones considered here are: Emacs in po-mode, <TT>poedit</TT>, 643<TT>kbabel</TT>, and <TT>gtranslator</TT>. 644 645<H2><A NAME="SECTION00081000000000000000"> 646Emacs PO mode</A> 647</H2> 648 Emacs should automatically enter po-mode when you load a .po file, as 649indicated by “PO” in the modeline at the bottom. The window is made 650read-only, so that you can edit the .po file only through special commands. A 651description of Emacs po-mode can be found under the gettext::Basics info node, 652or type ‘h’ or ‘?’ in a po-mode window for a list of available commands. While 653I find Emacs po-mode quite restrictive, this is probably due to unfamiliarity 654with it. Its main advantage is that it imposes rigid conformance to the PO 655file format, and checks the file format when closing the .po file 656buffer. Emacs po-mode is not useful for Oriya translation, as I know of no way 657to directly enter Oriya text under Emacs. 658 659<H2><A NAME="SECTION00082000000000000000"> 660poedit</A> 661</H2> 662 XXX: in preparation. 663 664<H2><A NAME="SECTION00083000000000000000"> 665KDE: the kbabel editor</A> 666</H2> 667 <TT>kbabel</TT> [<A 668 HREF="memo.html#url:kbabel">4</A>] is a more user-friendly and configurable editor than 669either of Emacs po-mode or <TT>poedit</TT>. It is integrated into KDE, and offers 670extensive contextual help. Besides support for various PO file features, it 671has a plugin framework for dictionaries, that allows consistency checks and 672translation suggestions. 673 674<H2><A NAME="SECTION00084000000000000000"> 675GNOME: the gtranslator editor</A> 676</H2> 677 XXX: in preparation. 678 679<H2><A NAME="SECTION00090000000000000000"> 680Bibliography</A> 681</H2><DL COMPACT><DD><P></P><DT><A NAME="xkb-oriya-layout">1</A> 682<DD> 683G. Mohanty, 684<BR>A practical primer for using Oriya under Linux, v0.3, 685<BR><TT><A NAME="tex2html1" 686 HREF="http://oriya.sarovar.org/docs/getting_started/index.html">http://oriya.sarovar.org/docs/getting_started/index.html</A></TT>, 2004, 687<BR>Sec. 6.2 describes the xkb layouts for Oriya. 688 689<P></P><DT><A NAME="url:oriya-trans-plan">2</A> 690<DD> 691G. Mohanty, 692<BR>A plan for Oriya localization, v0.1, 693<BR><TT><A NAME="tex2html2" 694 HREF="http://oriya.sarovar.org/docs/translation_plan/index.html">http://oriya.sarovar.org/docs/translation_plan/index.html</A></TT>, 695 2004. 696 697<P></P><DT><A NAME="url:lj-translation">3</A> 698<DD> 699Linux Journal article on internationalization, 700<BR><TT><A NAME="tex2html3" 701 HREF="https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3023">https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3023</A></TT>. 702 703<P></P><DT><A NAME="url:kbabel">4</A> 704<DD> 705Features of the kbabel editor, 706<BR><TT><A NAME="tex2html4" 707 HREF="http://i18n.kde.org/tools/kbabel/features.html">http://i18n.kde.org/tools/kbabel/features.html</A></TT>. 708</DL> 709 710<H1><A NAME="SECTION000100000000000000000"> 711About this document ...</A> 712</H1> 713 <STRONG>A tutorial on Native Language Support using GNU gettext</STRONG><P> 714This document was generated using the 715<A HREF="http://www.latex2html.org/"><STRONG>LaTeX</STRONG>2<tt>HTML</tt></A> translator Version 2002-2-1 (1.70) 716<P> 717Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 718<A HREF="http://cbl.leeds.ac.uk/nikos/personal.html">Nikos Drakos</A>, 719Computer Based Learning Unit, University of Leeds. 720<BR>Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999, 721<A HREF="http://www.maths.mq.edu.au/~ross/">Ross Moore</A>, 722Mathematics Department, Macquarie University, Sydney. 723<P> 724The command line arguments were: <BR> 725 <STRONG>latex2html</STRONG> <TT>-no_math -html_version 4.0,math,unicode,i18n,tables -split 0 memo</TT> 726<P> 727The translation was initiated by Gora Mohanty on 2004-07-24 728<DIV CLASS="navigation"><HR> 729 730<!--Navigation Panel 731<IMG WIDTH="81" HEIGHT="24" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" ALT="next_inactive" 732 SRC="file:/usr/share/latex2html/icons/nx_grp_g.png"> 733<IMG WIDTH="26" HEIGHT="24" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" ALT="up" 734 SRC="file:/usr/share/latex2html/icons/up_g.png"> 735<IMG WIDTH="63" HEIGHT="24" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" ALT="previous" 736 SRC="file:/usr/share/latex2html/icons/prev_g.png"> 737<BR></DIV> 738End of Navigation Panel--> 739 740<ADDRESS> 741Gora Mohanty 7422004-07-24 743</ADDRESS> 744</BODY> 745</HTML> 746
