Re: [xml] error message in other language

[Tim Van Holder <tim vanholder anubex com>]

Daniel Veillard wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 11, 2006 at 02:51:10PM +0200, Anne Müller wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have an xmlErrorPtr error.
> >
> > I want to show error messages (error->message) like
> >
> > “Element p is not declared in span list of possible children”.
> >
> > It works fine but I need this message in German. Has anybody an idea how
> > this could work?
>
>   Hum, not trivial, you would need to look at the exact error numbers
> and depending on the error either rebuild a localized error based on the 
> extra inforamtions given, or apply a transformation to the string (based
> for example on sscanf/sprintf)
>
> Daniel

I'd suggest filing a bugzilla entry for i18n of libxml; there's no good
reason why it shouldn't be gettextized.
Of course, once that's done, someone will still have to do the German
translations - but translating a message catalog is much much easier
than trying to parse the English error messages and replacing them with
German ones.

As for Daniel's reservations (cfr.
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/xml/2003-April/msg00048.html):
- if current messages are not intended for users, then they should not
  be the primary error information; instead, error codes would have to
  be used, with a default error handler that emits a not-user-oriented
  message based on that.  Requiring callers to parse textual errors in
  order to provide meaningful messages to the user is not a great
  design (and that is what I take it you mean when you speak of an
  "interpretation layer").  Also, there is something to be said for
  standardized error messages - why would it be a good idea for every
  program to have its own wording for an error when it's the same
  libxml2 error at the basis?
- Various localization mechanisms?  Add support for gettext, and you
  cover a wide range of platforms; those without gettext support simply
  get English messages as before.  This approach is used by many, many
  open source programs (including many parts of Gome).
- A lot of work?  I'd have to dig through the code, but as long as
  messages are created/emitted using *printf-style functions, it would
  be very little work to instrument existing code for gettext use (just
  add _() around translatable strings, and define _(message) to expand
  to dgettext("libxml2", message).  xgettext will then easily be able
  to extract the message catalog.

=> so I see it as a relatively small amount of work, with the benefit
   of standardized and fully localized error messages

*runs away before Daniel can grab me and force me to provide a patch*