[Idle-dev] Forking Idle - translating menus, etc.

[Andre Roberge]

I have started working on a possible implementation for providing
translations for IDLE's menu.  Right now, it generates a traceback which
stumps me. Regardless, before I spend more time trying to figure out what
goes on, I thought it would be a good idea to see if the approach I have in
mind would be acceptable.

Copying the docstring of the main module I wrote:

"""This module is intended to provide translations of menu items.

Instead of trying to approve translations for inclusion in Python's standard
library, translations would be obtained separately by the end users and
be located in a place from where they could be imported.
This could be done by having a user put a translation file in their home
directory or install them from Pypi.

A translation file could have any name.  However, its content would have
to include a dict named "idle_translation" whose content would include
at least one language, with the possibility of having more, and
would have the following structure

idle_translation = {
    "fr": { "File" : "Fichier", ...},
    "es": {"File": "Archivo", ...}     # not sure of the Spanish term
}

The addition of a directory would be done through the configuration
menu and the name of the translation file would be saved in the user's
configuration file.

In case it is needed, we compile a reverse dictionary; but we have not
gotten far enough to use it yet.

"""

The essence of the implementation can be described as follows:

Existing code (one example copy-pasted from editor.py)

menu.add_command(label=label, underline=underline,
                                         command=command,
                                         accelerator=accelerator)

New code

label = translator.get(label)  # single line added

menu.add_command(label=label, underline=underline,
                                         command=command,
                                         accelerator=accelerator)

Where translator.get(label) can be thought of as a function like the
following:

def get_translation(label):
    if translation_exists(user_language, label):
        return translation_of(user_language, label)
    else:
        return label

The actual code is a bit more complicated.

= = =
I admit to not really knowing how best to proceed with using git on a
project like this.
What I did is the following:
1. I cloned the cpython repository;
2. I created a local branch which I called "idle-translation-dev".
3. Trying to run "python -m idlelib", I got a traceback as "_pickle" could
not be found when pickle was processed. So, I changed the name of
"pickle.py" so that it would import the version from Python installed from
my computer.  That allowed me to proceed and explain the strange file
renaming you might see if you look at the commit.

What I did can be viewed in this single commit:

https://github.com/aroberge/cpython/commit/8e329288cf1e97d35ecc2b9b65fafb9e2190d361


The traceback I got (preceded by two print statement I included in an
attempt to figure out what went wrong) is the following:

menu =  options index =  *Code Context state =  disabled
menuitem =  .!menu.options
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\andre\github\cpython\Lib\runpy.py", line 193, in
_run_module_as_main
    "__main__", mod_spec)
  File "C:\Users\andre\github\cpython\Lib\runpy.py", line 85, in _run_code
    exec(code, run_globals)
  File "C:\Users\andre\github\cpython\Lib\idlelib\__main__.py", line 7, in
<module>
    idlelib.pyshell.main()
  File "C:\Users\andre\github\cpython\Lib\idlelib\pyshell.py", line 1521,
in main
    shell = flist.open_shell()
  File "C:\Users\andre\github\cpython\Lib\idlelib\pyshell.py", line 328, in
open_shell
    self.pyshell = PyShell(self)
  File "C:\Users\andre\github\cpython\Lib\idlelib\pyshell.py", line 879, in
__init__
    OutputWindow.__init__(self, flist, None, None)
  File "C:\Users\andre\github\cpython\Lib\idlelib\outwin.py", line 81, in
__init__
    self.update_menu_state('options', '*Code Context', 'disabled')
  File "C:\Users\andre\github\cpython\Lib\idlelib\editor.py", line 462, in
update_menu_state
    menuitem.entryconfig(index, state=state)
  File "C:\Users\andre\github\cpython\Lib\tkinter\__init__.py", line 3354,
in entryconfigure
    return self._configure(('entryconfigure', index), cnf, kw)
  File "C:\Users\andre\github\cpython\Lib\tkinter\__init__.py", line 1627,
in _configure
    self.tk.call(_flatten((self._w, cmd)) + self._options(cnf))
_tkinter.TclError: bad menu entry index "*Code Context"


I *suspect* that it is because other places required translations to my
fictitious uppercase language
before reaching that point, resulting in some inconsistencies ...
 but it seemed like a good place to stop to get some feedback
as to whether or not this approach would be acceptable.


André Roberge
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