i18n in a library

[Alex Martelli]

<posted & mailed>

Mathias Waack wrote:

> I'm using some different applications which all use the same package.
> Lets assume there are app "A" and "B" and a package "L". Now I've got
> a question regarding the translation of these apps:
> 
> It's easy to prepare translation using gettext.py. But I don't want
> to include all strings from the library in each app. So I get 3
> files: A.po, B.po and L.po. Is it possible to setup the gettext
> module to use both A.po and L.po to lookup strings for app A?
> 
> I think there must be a simple solution because this should be a
> common problem for each library writer. But I can't find a solution
> in the python docs:(

I think what you want is gettext.translation, which offers you
finer-grained control than gettext.install.  I.e., within the
modules of library L, you could use

    import gettext
    _ = gettext.translation('L').ugettext

so that in those modules function _ will look things up in domain
'L', rather than in whatever domain is "installed" globally.


Alex