1 TRANSLATING VIM MESSAGES
3 This file explains how to create and maintain po files using
4 gnu-gettext.win32, a MINGW32 Windows port of gettext by Franco Bez
5 <franco.bez@gmx.de>. You can find it at:
7 http://home.a-city.de/franco.bez/gettext/gettext_win32_en.html
9 First read the README.txt file for the general remarks
12 The file that does the work is Make_ming.mak in the po directory. It is an
13 adaptation of the Unix Makefile, but it does NOT test the presence of any po,
14 pot, or mo files, so use it at your own risk but with care: it could even kill
15 your canary. It has been tested by me several times (and with different
16 languages) with success.
18 The make utility must be run from the po directory.
20 First of all you must set the enviroment variable LANGUAGE to xx, where xx is
21 the name of your language. You can do it from the command line or adding a
22 line to your autoexec.bat file: set LANGUAGE=xx. You must also add your
23 language to the Make_ming.mak file in the lines LANGUAGES, MOFILES, AND
26 If you don't have a xx.po file, you must create it with the command:
28 make -f Make_ming.mak first_time
30 This will produce a new brand xx.po file with all the messages in Vim ready
31 for translation. Then you must source the cleanup.vim script from inside Vim;
32 it will comment the untranslated messages (now, all). I recommend to use
33 syntax highlighting so you can identify the untranslated messages easily.
34 You also must remove the '..\' that prepends the name of the source files.
35 (I don't no why, but make is unable to change the directory from po to src and
36 back to po, so all the work must be done from the po dir, hence the '..\')
38 Then you must go step (2) below.
40 If you are updating a po file you must follow the next steps (they are nearly
41 the same as in the Unix case, only the commands change):
43 (1) Add new and changed messages from the Vim sources:
45 make -f Make_ming.mak xx
47 This will extract all the strings from Vim and merge them in with the
48 existing translations. Requires the GNU gettext utilities. Also requires
49 unpacking the extra archive.
50 Your original xx.po file will be copied to xx.po.orig
52 -- After you do this, you MUST do the next three steps! --
55 See the gettext documentation on how to do this. You can also find
56 examples in the other po files.
57 Search the po file for items that require translation:
58 /\#\~ and also the fuzzy translations, /\#, fuzzy
59 Remove "#~" and "#, fuzzy" after adding the translation.
61 There is one special message:
62 msgid "Messages maintainer: Bram Moolenaar <Bram@vim.org>"
63 You should include your name and E-mail address instead, for example:
64 msgstr "Berichten übersetzt bei: John Doe <john@doe.org>"
67 This is very important to make sure the translation works on all systems.
68 Comment-out all non-translated strings. There are two types:
69 - items marked with "#, fuzzy"
70 - items with an empty msgstr
71 You can do this with the cleanup.vim script:
77 vim -S check.vim xx.po
78 make -f Make_ming.mak xx.mo
80 Look out for syntax errors and fix them.
82 (5) This is an extra step, ;-). If you want the vim.mo file installed in your
85 make -f Make_ming.mak install
87 This will create the xx\LC_MESSAGES directory (if it does not exist) and
88 will copy vim.po to it.
90 (6) Another extra step ;-)). The command:
92 make -f Make_ming.mak clean
94 will delete the temp files created during the process.
96 Suggestions will be welcomed.
98 Eduardo F. Amatria <eferna1@platea.pntic.mec.es>
100 Happy Vimming with NLS!!