Localization/Translation FAQ
              
    by Ran Rutenberg, Pavel Sanda, Michael Gerz

    February 2007

This file is mainly intended for those who have no or little experience using 
.po files, but want to contribute by translating the LyX interface into their 
native language.


1) WHERE DO I START?

The file you need to edit it an xx.po file where xx stands for your language's
two letter code. For a list of languages codes look at:

  http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_mono/gettext.html#Language-Codes

If you want to start from scratch then you should obtain a copy of the lyx.pot
and name it after your language. German would be for example de.po and Polish
pl.po. This file is generated in the "po" directory of the source tree during
the compilation.


2) HOW DO I EDIT PO FILES?

PO files can be edited with every text editor available for your system (e.g. 
VIM, NotePad etc.). Yet another option is to use a specialized editor for .po 
files. You can e.g. use the editors "poEdit" or "jEdit", Linux users can 
additionally use e.g. "kbabel". Using these editors usually makes things easier 
as they have many tools to assist the translator.


3) WHAT DO I NEED TO TRANSLATE?

If you are using a simple text editor you should translate the strings that
appear in the msgid line and write the translation into the msgstr line. Note
that a "#, fuzzy" line is just a hint for translation from compiler - in order
to get the translation of the current item working you have to delete this
line. It is recommended that you would take a look at another .po file - that
way you can get an idea of what to do. If you are using a specialized po editor
then you will see in it the untranslated strings and a place to write your
translation for them.


4) WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH THE '&', '|', '$, '%' {} AND [[]] CHARACTERS?

'&' stands for underlined characters (shortcut) in dialog boxes.
'|' stands for underlined characters in menus.

These chars should be somehow used in your translations, however you'll have to 
invent your own working shortcuts for dialog and menu entries and resolve 
possible conflicts of the same shortcut chars in one menu... 

Note also that there are already used global shortcuts (such as p k x c m s a)
and you should avoid to use these characters for first-level menu shortcuts.

'$' and '%' are usually used as handlers for formatting or variables to be 
inserted into the strings. Character sequences like %1$s or %1$d MUST also 
appear in your translations! Please take them exactly as they are or you may 
experience crashes when running LyX.

[[Context]] is used to distinguish otherwise identical strings, which could
have different translation dependent on the Context. [[Context]] appears only
in msgid string and should not be repeated in the translated version.

{} refer to counters and must not be translated. Example would be:
msgid "Algorithm \\arabic{theorem}"
msgstr "Algoritmus \\arabic{theorem}"


5) WHAT IS pocheck.pl AND HOW DO I USE IT?

This is a small script located in the "po" directory of the source that helps 
you find common errors in your translation. In order to use this script you have 
to have the script language Perl installed.


6) HOW CAN I TEST MY TRANSLATION?

In order to test your translation you need to obtain the LyX sources (from the 
SVN repository) and replace the existing .po with yours. Afterwards, you should 
compile and install LyX (check the INSTALL file for your OS). If you don't 
install LyX it won't work. In order to run LyX with your translation, use the 
appropriate LANG variable:

  On Linux: LANG=xx_CC lyx
  On Windows, you need to change the lyx.bat file and write: set LANG=xx_CC

xx stands for your language code. CC stands for your country code. So to get, 
e.g., Czech, the code is "cs_CZ".

The most comfortable way to see your updated translation while editing, is
running (in linux):
1. "make xx.gmo" in the po directory to compile updated xx.po translation
2. "make install" in root lyx tree to copy xx.gmo into the appropriate location
   (or do it by hand...) 

For advanced users - if you want to remerge your files against current source
files run make update-po. 


7) HOW TO CONTRIBUTE MY WORK?

Send your edited xx.po file to po-updates@lyx.org.

Also you can check
http://www.lyx.org/trac/browser/lyx-devel/branches/BRANCH_1_6_X/po
to track changes or watch updates.


8) REFERENCES

For some basic idea on how the translation works, you can look at 

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettext

For detailed reference (including full list of country and language codes),
have a look at 

  http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html


Consider subscribing to the documentation list at lyx-docs@lists.lyx.org (rather
silent one) or developer's mailing list lyx-devel@lists.lyx.org (high volume).