Re: The internationalization tutorial.

["Paul Davis" <pjdavis engineering uiowa edu>]

On 5/31/07, Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-05-31 at 09:45 -0500, Paul Elliott wrote:
> > I have a number of problems with the internationalization section of
> > the tutorial:
> > http://www.gtkmm.org/docs/gtkmm-2.4/docs/tutorial/html/ch24.html#sec-internationalization-intro
> >
> > It is too cookbook. It tells you what to do but not what you are doing. When
> > you run into problems you don't know how to fix it, because you don't know
> > what you are doing.
>
> This seems like very valid criticism. Patches to the documentation would
> be helpful. In general, I think some of this explanation is missing
> because intltool has been rather strange to use, and changing. But maybe
> now we know enough to give more explanation.
>
> >
> > For example they tell you to add this code to your configure.ac file:
> >
> > IT_PROG_INTLTOOL([0.35.0])
> >
> >       GETTEXT_PACKAGE=programname
> >       AC_SUBST(GETTEXT_PACKAGE)
> >       AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED([GETTEXT_PACKAGE], ["$GETTEXT_PACKAGE"], [The domain to use with gettext])
> >       AM_GLIB_GNU_GETTEXT
> >
> >       PROGRAMNAME_LOCALEDIR=[${datadir}/locale]
> >       AC_SUBST(PROGRAMNAME_LOCALEDIR)
> >
> > but they do not tell you what this code does! It feels like cargo cult programming.
> >
> > It tells you to add these files: intltool-extract.in intltool-merge.in intltool-update.in
> > to EXTRA_DIST, but it does not tell you what these files are or where to find them
> > or how to create them!
> >
> > It does not tell you which steps are unique to gtkmm2 and which steps would
> > be required for any program that uses gettext. BTW, what is
> > the answer to this? Which of the steps are unique to gtkmm2?
> >
> > It tells you to "Add po to the SUBDIRS variable." It there anyway to
> > do internationalization without using recursive make?
> >
> > In a famous paper: "Recursive Make Considered Harmful"
> > http://aegis.sourceforge.net/auug97.pdf Peter Miller argues that
> > recursive make should not be used. Is there anyway to do this?
> >

1. There is a way, but I wouldn't reccomend it. The autotools suite is
large and cumbersome. If it works you should run with it.

2. There are a few of us that would tell you that make itself is
considered harmful. SCons is a great replacement (and there are
others). The other Paul Davis has a pretty good sized program called
Ardour that uses SCons and internationalization that would make a good
example for you. After you learn scons itself that is, his build files
are a  bit complex for the begginner.

www.scons.org
ardour.org

> > Is there any other documentation on how to setup internationalization
> > using gettext? Thank You.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > gtkmm-list mailing list
> > gtkmm-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtkmm-list
> --
> Murray Cumming
> murrayc murrayc com
> www.murrayc.com
> www.openismus.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> gtkmm-list mailing list
> gtkmm-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtkmm-list