Re: Changing the lang by an application

[Havoc Pennington <rhpennin midway uchicago edu>]

On 21 Nov 1998, Ulrich Drepper wrote:
> 
> If gettext is used correctly this is not true.  If the various widgets
> don't cache the strings but instead retrieve them via gettext every
> time every change of the LANGUAGE, LC_ALL, LC_MESSAGES, or LANG
> variable has the appropriate effect.
> 
> In this case the only thing necessary would be to redard every single
> visible part of the UI.
> 

So if labels called gettext() internally on whatever string they received,
it would just work? How do apps mark strings for translation? (N_ ?)

I guess the problem is that Gtk doesn't use gettext, so you have to
translate the string before the label gets it and the label gets the
translated copy. 

Looks to me like we already trigger a full redraw when changing themes, so
once Gtk supports gettext this would follow naturally (problem being all
the legacy code that still translates the string before sticking it in the
label).

Havoc