Re: Internationalization

[Ralph Schleicher <rs@purple.UL.BaWue.DE>]

William Perry <wmperry@aventail.com> cited below with "WP" writes:

WP>   This patch would probably work just fine on XEmacs.  I'll give it a whirl
WP> this weekend maybe.... if I don't spend it all babying the baby.  Sick
WP> toddlers aren't conducive to hacking. :)

I couldn't follow the complete thread so please allow me hooking in here.

Lars's patch is a little bit too simple.  You should treat every Emacs
buffer as an independent domain.  With Lars's patch, `_' have to be an
alias for

(progn
  (set-translation-domain DOMAIN)
  (translate-string MESSAGE))

I think that the following definition is better suited for Emacs
(`gettext-domain' and `gettext-locale' are buffer-local variables).

(defun gettext (domain message &optional locale)
  "Look up MESSAGE in the DOMAIN message catalog.
If not found, returns MESSAGE itself (the default text).
If DOMAIN is `nil', then look up MESSAGE in the current domain.
If DOMAIN is `\"\"', then look up MESSAGE in the `\"messages\"' domain.
Optional third argument LOCALE overrides the current locale."
  (cond ((equal domain nil)
	 (setq domain gettext-domain))
	((equal domain "")
	 (setq domain "messages")))
  (cond ((equal locale nil)
	 (setq locale gettext-locale))
	((equal locale "")
	 (setq locale "POSIX")))
  (let* ((messages (gettext-find-messages domain locale))
	 (symbol (and messages (intern-soft message messages))))
     (or (symbol-value symbol) message)))

-- 
Ralph * http://www.UL.BaWue.DE/~rs/

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