[PyQt] i18n

[Giovanni Bajo]

On 2/11/2009 5:58 PM, Doug Bell wrote:
> Frédéric wrote:
>> On mercredi 11 février 2009, Doug Bell wrote:
>>
>>>> Are there some tips, for example, to bind the _() method I use with
>>>> gettext and PyGTK? Something to help me migrate my code without having
>>>> to modify it everywhere...
>>> Here's how I do it:
>>>
>>>     def translate(text, comment=''):
>>>         """Translation function that sets context to calling module's
>>>            filename"""
>>>         try:
>>>             frame = sys._getframe(1)
>>>             fileName = frame.f_code.co_filename
>>>         finally:
>>>             del frame
>>>         context = os.path.basename(os.path.splitext(fileName)[0])
>>>         return unicode(QtCore.QCoreApplication.translate(context, text,
>>>                                                          comment))
>>>
>>>     def markNoTranslate(text, comment=''):
>>>         """Mark text for translation without actually doing the
>>>            translation"""
>>>         return text
>>>
>>>     __builtin__._ = translate
>>>     __builtin__.N_ = markNoTranslate
>> Thanks!
>>
>> What is the purpose of the N_() function?
> 
> It's for cases where you want to mark a string to be included in the
> language files, but you don't want to change the string by doing the
> translation immediately.  An example would be a string used as a key in
> an untranslated data file that later needs to be translated for output.
> The N_() function applied to the string literal would just mark it, then
> the _() function could be applied later to a variable containing that
> string.
> 
> Note that you will also need to slightly modify the pylupdate program
> to look for the _() and N_() functions and to use the proper context.

It looks like a little too much effort. For such cases, what we usually 
do is something like:

if 0:
    self.tr("text 1")
    self.tr("text 2")
    self.tr("text 3")
    self.tr("text 4")
    self.tr("text 5")

and you're done. Moreover: if those strings comes from a data file, you 
can even write a generator that parses the data file, produces a file 
like the above snippet, and feed it to pylupdate. You don't need a 
custom pylupdate for sure.

This said, I don't agree with the recommendation of not using self.tr(). 
In my experience, there are only a few cases where this turns out to be 
a problem, compared to the benefits of code readability of self.tr(). 
For those cases in which it is a problem, the alternative is to use 
qApp.translate(), which is a much shorter synonymous of 
QtCore.QCoreApplication.translate :) (OK I'm cheating: I'm not taking 
into account that I can use 'qApp' because of star-imports).
-- 
Giovanni Bajo
Develer S.r.l.
http://www.develer.com