Re: i18n, .po, .gmo, .mo puzzle
Amaya wrote:
> I just translated the .po files for one of my packages (gnomekiss) and I
> am having trouble getting the i18n stuff installed.
>
> Please, bear with me, as this is my first attepmt to get in terms with
> gettext, .po, gtranslator and the rest of the crew :-)
>
> First I have seen that alll the "normal" apps have their i18n stuff
> installed under /usr/share/locale/$LANG/LC_MESSAGES/ and that all the
> files there are called *.mo.
>
> Then I see that my own package installs nothing there at all. And the
> files I get under po/ are all name *.gmo ¿?. This puzzles me to no avail
> and I really do not know how to proceed.
>
> Please tell me what to read ;-)
>
> I looked at debian/rules files for similar packages and I see there's
> nothing special to be done, so I guess upstream is not doing something
> right in his Makefile. But, what exactly should I tell him on this?
The .gmo files are .mo files "in GNU format", which is the only widely
used format in Linux, so they are in fact the same thing. The .mo
files are built from the .po files via the msgfmt tool, but the
Makefiles should already take care of that. Upstream packages usually
provide these .gmo files in the source so that the package does not
need gettext to build.
If you are adding a language which did not exist previously in the
package you have to add it to the ALL_LINGUAS variable in the
configure script (it might be also possible to override it at run
time, but I have not tested it).
Look at the gettext manual. In doubt, the GNU hello package at
alpha.gnu.org is an example of minimal package using gettext.
[ BTW: If your package uses gettext for i18n, please point the author to the
Free Translation Project at http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po
so that translations are made in a coordinated way ].
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