[Kbabel] Full Gettext support in KBabel

[Stanislav Visnovsky]

Dňa Štvrtok 20 Október 2005 14:43 Nicolas Goutte napísal:
> On Thursday 20 October 2005 13:24, Chusslove Illich wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> >
> > What would it take for KBabel to fully support Gettext PO features?
>
> Well, it is quite (too) late now, as KDE 3.5 is in message freeze.
> Therefore KBabel cannot be changed where it would matter.
>
> (KDE 4 will not be translated with its own KBabel but with the KBabel of
> KDE 3.5. We had that experience already with KDE2 to KDE3 switch.)
>
> > Since
> > few days ago, Gettext has full support for what we need in KDE: formal
> > contexts (new msgctxt field) and xgettext extractor updated accordingly
> > (will also work for overloaded ordinary, context and plural calls). So I
> > think there is no reason to fiddle with custom stuff for KDE 4, providing
> > that all tools are updated to handle standard Gettext POs, KBabel being
> > primary.
>
> Well, it also depends how fast such a Gettext is officially released, so
> that it can be really used.
>
> (Do not forget! KBabel is a tool for translators. That are not people that
> can jump on every new software tool, either because they do not have the
> knowledge how to compile or because downloading is cost-intensive (not to
> say prohibitive). You can look at how many people we have lost with the
> change from CVS to SVN.)
>
> > I've browsed a bit through KBabel's Gettext import/export code, and
> > couldn't find anything explicitly left to be done, but I've been said
> > that
>
> msgid_plural and msgstr_plural are not correctly handled
> (only loaded as far as I understand the code).

They are fully supported. Try one, for example gettext.po ;-)

>
> > it doesn't function perfectly. So, is it just buggy, or something else? I
> > could devote some time to get these internals done, but not the required
> > GUI updates (needed for context), as GUI stuff is out of my comprehension
> > currently.
> >
> >
> > Is there a reason not to go for Gettext's own libgettextpo for
> > import/export of PO files?
>
> As far as I had understood Stanislas, the problem is that those functions
> cannot recover from syntax errors in the file. KBabel's editor (not the
> catalog manager) tries to be error tolerant at load.

Yes. And the library does not provide access to the comments.

>
> As for the catalog manager, as far as I know, its PO loading code is from
> Gettext. (However at least change to support CR+LF endings.)

No, it's created by hand, but using gettext lib there would make sense.

>
> > On a side note, regarding GUI, I am also interested why are the message
> > storage specifics left in it? Like escaped characters, non-newline line
> > breaks, comments, plurals.
> >
> > It seems to me that it would be better if
> > KBabel had a consistent user-side representation, so that it doesn't
> > matter what the underlying translation file format is.
>
> That what is planned for KBabel of KDE4. That is why the change to XLIFF
> (or XLIFF-like) internal representation is planned. (As for who will do
> what and when, that seems to be a totally open question. I am not sure that
> there is even any people following this mailing list who are trying to
> compile KBabel on KDE4 regularly.)
>
> >It should only
> > decide which of representation features to use, depending what the loaded
> > format supports.
>
> Have a nice day!

Stano