Adding a translation to gkrellm-volume

0) History

This document is taken from the gkrellm source tree and adapted for gkrellm-volume

1) Extract the strings from the source

In the gkrellm-volume top level directory, create the .po template (.pot):

xgettext -k_ -kN_ src/*.c -o po/gkrellm-volume.pot

2) Update or create .po files

If there are any existing translations, XX.po files, then merge them:

        cd po
        msgmerge XX.po  gkrellm-volume.pot > XX.po.new
        mv XX.po.new XX.po

Or, if this is a new translation, copy the template:

        cd po
        cp gkrellm-volume.pot XX.po

3) Add translations

Edit XX.po to add translations for new strings, fix broken translations, and touch up fuzzy translations.

4) Make and install gkrellm-volume with i18n enabled

If make is run from this directory instead of the top level dir, you must explicitely enable i18n in all the below examples by adding enable_nls=1 to the make command:

make enable_nls=1

And for the install step:

make install enable_nls=1

i18n will be automatically enabled when make is run from the top level dir.

In either case, a make install will for each XX.po file create a XX.mo file and copy it to:

$LOCALEDIR/XX/LC_MESSAGES/gkrellm-volume.mo

If there is no LOCALEDIR environment variable, then the default install will be to:

/usr/share/locale/XX/LC_MESSAGES/gkrellm-volume.mo

But, if you want a different explicit install directory, do for example:

make install LOCALEDIR=/usr/local/share/locale

or (for bash)

        export LOCALEDIR=/usr/local/share/locale
        make install

Other export lines:

        sh:  export LOCALEDIR; LOCALEDIR=/usr/local/share/locale
        csh: setenv LOCALEDIR /usr/local/share/locale

You can also specify the textdomain package name. From bash:

make install PACKAGE=gkrellm-volume2

Using a translation

A user must have localizations enabled for a translation to be used. To enable a localization, the LANG environment variable should be set via the command line or the shell login startup files.

For example, to see the French translation, a user should be able to:

From bash:

export LANG=fr_FR
or from csh

setenv LANG fr_FR

If fr_FR does not work, try fr_FR.ISO_8859-1