[Python-Dev] Re: [Patches] Translating doc strings

[Peter Funk]

Hi, 

[Barry A. Warsaw]:
> pygettext is in Tools/i18n, and I've been working with James
> Henstridge and Peter Funk on getting a standard gettext module
> integrated into the core.  A few other things have bumped that down on
> my list, but it's still there.

I will try to make some progress.  Currently I'm not sure how to
define a class 'Translator' ...  I'm open for suggestions.  James
has also made some interesting points.

> We'll still need xgettext to scan the C code.  Also, marking Python
> module docstrings is a bit problematic.  I've resorted to Something
> Really Ugly:
> 
> -------------------- snip snip --------------------
> try:
>     import fintl
>     _ = fintl.gettext
> except ImportError:
>     def _(s): return s
> 
> 
> __doc__ = _("""pygettext -- Python equivalent of xgettext(1)
> ...")
> -------------------- snip snip --------------------
> 
> Yuck.

I agree: this is really ugly.  Since doc-strings are something special,
I don't think, we should travel further down this road.  I believe,
we should use a special doc-string extration-tool (possibly build
on top of ping's 'inspect.py'?), which will then create a .pot-file
solely out of __doc__-strings.

Regards, Peter.