Re: Emacs i18n

[Juri Linkov <juri@linkov.net>]

>> Please note that you have to handle not only format-strings of
>> ‘message’, but also ‘error’ and even more low-level ‘format’, i.e. all
>> these (error STRING &rest ARGS) (message FORMAT-STRING &rest ARGS)
>> (format-message STRING &rest OBJECTS) (format STRING &rest OBJECTS)
>>
> I expect that 'format' won't translate its first argument, whereas
> 'error', 'message', and 'format-message' will. This will be for the same
> reason that 'format' does not translate quotes.

Then it should be sufficient to add a gettext call to 'format-message' only,
because all other related functions 'message', 'error', 'tramp-message',
'tramp-error', etc. all they use 'format-message' directly or indirectly.

If someone would create a new branch with all standard gettext prerequisites
like Makefiles, headers, textdomain bindings, locale settings,
i.e. everything that is required to translate other GNU applications,
then I could help with testing and finding more problematic places.
Only then we could see how well gettext (designed for static translation)
performs in more dynamic Emacs environment.

>> there are many places that construct the string arguments of ‘message’
>> using ‘format’ like in ‘perform-replace’:
>>
> Yes, quite right. These places will need to be redone so that the
> translation will work properly. Here's a first cut at how to redo the
> perform-replace code that you mentioned (this could get fancier if needed):
>
>   (nmessage replace-count
>             "Replaced %d occurrence%s"
>             "Replaced %d occurrences%s"
>             replace-count

IIUC, using standard gettext functions this would rather correspond to

  (message (ngettext "Replaced %1$d occurrence%s"
                     "Replaced %1$d occurrences%s"
                     replace-count)
           replace-count
           (if (> (+ skip-read-only-count
                     skip-filtered-count
                     skip-invisible-count)
                  0)
               (format-message
                " (skipped %s)"
                (mapconcat
                 #'identity
                 (delq nil (list
                            (if (> skip-read-only-count 0)
                                (format-message "%s read-only"
                                                skip-read-only-count))
                            (if (> skip-invisible-count 0)
                                (format-message "%s invisible"
                                                skip-invisible-count))
                            (if (> skip-filtered-count 0)
                                (format-message "%s filtered out"
                                                skip-filtered-count))))
                 (gettext ", ")))
             ""))