2 language applications

[Cristian Echeverria]

That is what I call "AN EXPLANATION"...
...Thank you very much
Now I understand what are those .po and .mo files

Cristian


"Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<9fkubv0i48 at enews2.newsguy.com>...
> "Cristian Echeverria" <cer at tutopia.com> wrote in message
> news:9fk6ll$4ln39$1 at ID-44371.news.dfncis.de...
> > Hi
> >
> > I have a gui application with all the messages in spanish, now I want to
> > include an option that allow the user to choose the language.
> >
> > Wich is the right way to do things like this?
> > Any suggestion that can help me?
> >
> > (I'am using Python2.0 and wxPython 2.3 on win9X)
> 
> See standard Python module gettext -- it's part of core
> Python so you should have it in any distribution.
> 
> The tools to *generate* the needed messagefiles may or
> may not be part of your Python distribution -- if you
> can't find them, get a Python *source* distribution and
> look for Tools/i18n.  (Not sure why this VERY useful
> directory is not included in some distributions - it's
> just two Python scripts after all!-).
> 
> Say I have this big Python application saluta.py...:
> print "buon giorno!"
> print "ciao!")
> print "buona sera!"
> 
> First I internationalize it as follows:
> import os,gettext
> 
> os.environ.setdefault("LANGUAGE","it")
> gettext.install('saluta')
> 
> print _("buon giorno!")
> print _("ciao!")
> print _("buona sera!")
> 
> The key thing is marking with _(...) the
> strings which ARE to be translated!
> 
> Now I can't run it...:
> 
> D:\py21>python saluta.py
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "saluta.py", line 4, in ?
>     gettext.install('saluta')
>   File "d:\python21\lib\gettext.py", line 251, in install
>     translation(domain, localedir).install(unicode)
>   File "d:\python21\lib\gettext.py", line 238, in translation
>     raise IOError(ENOENT, 'No translation file found for domain', domain)
> IOError: [Errno 2] No translation file found for domain: 'saluta'
> 
> D:\py21>
> 
> I have to prepare a message file first...:
> 
> D:\py21>python \python-2.1\Tools\i18n\pygettext.py saluta.py
> 
> D:\py21>type messages.pot
> # SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE.
> # Copyright (C) YEAR ORGANIZATION
> # FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL at ADDRESS>, YEAR.
> #
> msgid ""
> msgstr ""
> "Project-Id-Version: PACKAGE VERSION\n"
> "POT-Creation-Date: Wed Jun 06 11:29:12 2001\n"
> "PO-Revision-Date: YEAR-MO-DA HO:MI+ZONE\n"
> "Last-Translator: FULL NAME <EMAIL at ADDRESS>\n"
> "Language-Team: LANGUAGE <LL at li.org>\n"
> "MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
> "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=CHARSET\n"
> "Content-Transfer-Encoding: ENCODING\n"
> "Generated-By: pygettext.py 1.3\n"
> 
> 
> #: saluta.py:5
> msgid "buon giorno!"
> msgstr ""
> 
> #: saluta.py:7
> msgid "buona sera!"
> msgstr ""
> 
> #: saluta.py:6
> msgid "ciao!"
> msgstr ""
> 
> 
> D:\py21>
> 
> Now I have to edit this textfile to prepare the
> needed .po files -- after the beginning metadata
> (to be suitably edited), I'll have an it.po something
> like:
> #: saluta.py:5
> msgid "buon giorno!"
> msgstr "buon giorno!"
> 
> #: saluta.py:7
> msgid "buona sera!"
> msgstr "buona sera!"
> 
> #: saluta.py:6
> msgid "ciao!"
> msgstr "ciao!"
> 
> and an en.po something like:
> #: saluta.py:5
> msgid "buon giorno!"
> msgstr "good morning!"
> 
> #: saluta.py:7
> msgid "buona sera!"
> msgstr "good evening!"
> 
> #: saluta.py:6
> msgid "ciao!"
> msgstr "hello!"
> 
> So I compile them:
> D:\py21>python \python-2.1\Tools\i18n\msgfmt.py en.po
> 
> D:\py21>python \python-2.1\Tools\i18n\msgfmt.py it.po
> 
> And prepare the needed directories (lots of intermediate
> mkdir's snipped:-):
> D:\py21>mkdir \python21\share\locale\it\LC_MESSAGES
> D:\py21>mkdir \python21\share\locale\en\LC_MESSAGES
> 
> and put the .mo files in the right places:
> 
> D:\py21>copy it.mo \python21\share\locale\it\LC_MESSAGES\saluta.mo
>         1 file(s) copied.
> 
> D:\py21>copy en.mo \python21\share\locale\en\LC_MESSAGES\saluta.mo
>         1 file(s) copied.
> 
> D:\py21>
> 
> And NOW it finally runs properly:
> 
> D:\py21>python saluta.py
> buon giorno!
> ciao!
> buona sera!
> 
> D:\py21>set LANGUAGE=en
> 
> D:\py21>python saluta.py
> good morning!
> hello!
> good evening!
> 
> 
> I hope this simple toy example helps you get started... it's a
> rich and complex system, meant to cover potentially very large
> applications with dozens of languages, modules that must not
> touch global settings, etc, etc, and it works quite smoothly
> over its broad range of applicability, even though it MAY look
> like a BIT of an overkill when just looking at one simple case
> such as this one!-)
> 
> 
> Alex