[Indic-computing-users] LinuxJournal (www.linuxjournal.com) on internationalization

[Frederick N. <fr...@by...>]

CHECK OUT THE Nov 2002 issue of Linux Journal, which has
internationalization as its cover story. Olexiy Ye Tykhomyrov describes
the basic aspects of i18n and provides a sample i18n output
program. This article introduced the GNU gettext system. Page
52 onwards. He can be contacted at ti...@ff...

	Extract: Typically, a programmer works on the source code
	and a translator deals with the corresponding .po file,
	which may be created with the copy command from the .pot
	file or directly from the source of the xgettext program.

	Glance over the .po file, and you will see it has a header
	and entries for translating. Here is an example of an entry:

	#This is my own commentary
	#: counter.c:25
	#, c-format
	msgid "You typed %d %s \n"
	msgstr "Vous avez tape %d %s \n"

	It's simple. You translate phrases from msgid and put
	the results into the msgstr fields. If a line starts
	with #:, it is a reference to the source. If it starts 
	with #, it shows an entry's attributes. You can add
	your own comments in lines starting with two 
	symbols: #  (the pound sign and a white space).

	After copying the template .pot file information (.po)
	or creating a new one with the xgettext command,
	you can start translating. Generally, this job can be
	done by another person using his or her favourite editor.
	(X)Emacs is not a bad choice for this job, but KBabel,
	part of KDE, is an even better one. If you are going to
	participate in a team of translators, it is highly
	recommended that you use KBabel....

RESOURCES: 

Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA)   www.iana.org

Jim Flowers' X Logical Font Description Conventions
www.msu.edu/`huntharo/xwin/docs/xwindows/XLFD.pdf

Tomohiro KUBOTA's Introduction to i18n
www.debian.org/doc/manuals/intro-i18n

Nandine Kano's Development International Software for Windows 95 and
Windows NT, Microsoft Press, 1995 (ISBN 1-55615-840-8)

Introduction to gettext
www.gnu.org/software/gettext

Matthias Keifer's The KBabel Handbook
docs.kde.org/2.2.2/kdesdk/kbabel

Qt Reference Documentation: doc.trolltech.com/3.0/