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HOWTO: Translating GnuCash<br>
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[[Category:Translation]]
 +
{| class="wikitable" style="margin: auto;"
 +
! scope="row"|Languages
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| [[Zh-hans/翻译|简体中文]]
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| | [[He/{{PAGENAME:תרגום}}|עִברִית]]
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|}
  
The concept of this document is to give you step-by-step instructions on  
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;Tip: Use [https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=en&tl=de&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwiki.gnucash.org%2Fwiki%2FTranslation&sandbox=1 Google translation] and select your language to get a machine translation of this document.
how to update (or create if non-existant) language ''translation''s and other ''localization'' tasks for the  
+
The concept of this document is to give you step-by-step instructions on how to create or update ''translation''s and other ''localization'' tasks for the gnucash project.  
gnucash project. See [[Translation Status]] for the current status of the project with respect to translation contributions.
+
 
 +
There are related pages for
 +
:programmers: [[I18N]] and
 +
:project maintainers: [[Language_Administration]].
  
 
== Overview ==
 
== Overview ==
  
GnuCash has several separate areas that need translations or localization:
+
GnuCash has several separate areas that need translations or localization, which are by priority:
[[#The glossary file]] is in a subdirectory of the programs message catalogs: You should translate or review this ~200 terms at the beginning to get a consistent terminology in all following parts.
+
;The [[#The glossary file|Glossary]]: A reference in form of a ''message catalog'' with terms that are commonly used throughout GnuCash's other components and their '''explanation'''. Preferably it should be translated first for each new language to define a consistent terminology for the other parts.
* The [[#Translating the Program|program]]'s '''message catalogs''': These control the user interface of the program itself and consists of ~4k strings. But not all are really important.
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:[{{URL:wl|engage}} {{URL:wl|widgets}}-/glossary/287x66-grey.png]
* A [[#How to translate the Windows Installer|Windows Installer]] with ~20 strings.
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;The [[#Translating the Program|Program]]: Its ''message catalogs'' contain all text messages for the application's user interface. Not all are equally important though.
* The [[#How to translate the files containing the new account hierarchies|Account Templates]]: This is a set of pre-built sections of charts of accounts which are presented to the user when she creates a new file.
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:[{{URL:wl|engage}} {{URL:wl|widgets}}-/gnucash/287x66-grey.png]
* The [[#Translating the GnuCash Guide and Help|documentation]]: the Help Manual and the [[Concept Guide|Tutorial and Concepts Guide]]. These documents explain how to use GnuCash. They are written in DocBook, an XML variant.
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:Please read at least [[#Adjust special messages]] and [[#Special characters and other tips]], if you use one of that services.
* The [[#How to translate the website|website]], while mostly written in PHP/HTML, uses message catalogs, too.
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;The [[Windows Installer Translation|Windows Installer]]: It contains some '''20''' strings.
* [[#How to create localized Income Tax Tables|Income Tax Tables]] require some knowledge of your regional tax rules.
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;The [[#How to translate the files containing the new account hierarchies|Account Templates]]: A set of ready to use account chart snippets ''for personal users'' that can be mixed and matched into a full chart of accounts during the creation of a new a new GnuCash file with currently '''115''' translatable account names.
* Optional you can translate [[#Check doc/README-*|doc/README-*]] files, too.
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:*If your government or other authorities offer specific templates ''for business users'', you can create them, too.
 +
;The [[#Translating the GnuCash Guide and Help|Documentation]]: The Help Manual and the [[Concept Guide|Tutorial and Concepts Guide]]. These documents explain how to use GnuCash. They are written in DocBook, an XML variant.
 +
;The [[#How to translate the website|Website]]: While mostly written in PHP/HTML, it uses ''message catalogs'', too.
 +
:[{{URL:wl|engage}} {{URL:wl|widgets}}-/website/287x66-grey.png]
 +
:* In theory one could also translate recent announcements from the '''news''' directory into the language specific subfolder, but ususally there are more important tasks around.
 +
;The [[#How to create localized Income Tax Tables|Income Tax Tables]]: They require some knowledge of your regional tax rules and are related to ''account templates''.
 +
;Currencies: GnuCash uses the translation of the ISO 4217 '''currency''' codes and names. This are maintained by the [https://salsa.debian.org/iso-codes-team/iso-codes ISO Codes Team]. If your language is missing or has issues contact them or contribute:
 +
:[{{URL:wl|engage|iso-codes}} {{URL:wl|widgets|iso-codes}}-/iso-4217/287x66-white.png]
 +
* Optionally you can [[#Check Files in Repo gnucash's doc Directory]] files, too.
  
== Available resources ==
+
== Available Resources ==
 
There are many resources to support you at gnucash.org and other places. Don't hesitate to use them.
 
There are many resources to support you at gnucash.org and other places. Don't hesitate to use them.
  
 
=== gnucash.org ===
 
=== gnucash.org ===
We have collected a bunch of useful information for you here in this wiki -
+
We have collected a bunch of useful information for you here in '''this wiki''' -
:navigate from the [[GnuCash|main page]] or use the search function -
+
:''navigate'' from the [[GnuCash|main page]], or the [[Special:Categories]] or use the ''search'' function -
and on the website [http://www.gnucash.org http://www.gnucash.org].
+
and on the '''website''' {{URL:www}}.
  
And we have several channels of communication and a few other useful tools:
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And we have several '''channels of communication''' and a few other useful tools:
 +
:;IRC: The fastest way to get help on ''simple questions'' is using the '''internet relay chat''' [[IRC]], as many of the developers hang out there and are eager to help.
 +
:;Mailing lists: Translators will probably find two or three gnucash mailing lists of interest. If you can not find the answers to your questions in their [[Mailing_Lists#Mailing List Archives]], feel free to ask them.
 +
::* For ''language and region specific questions'', where you should discuss terms and ask for proofreading of your work, use your languages mailing list. Currently we have
 +
::*: '''gnucash-'''[pt_]'''br''',''' de''',''' es''',''' fr''',''' it''',''' nl'''.
 +
::: If none exists for your language or nobody has an answer there, use the english lists:
 +
:::* ''General use questions'' and answers are found on the '''gnucash-users''' mailing list,
 +
:::* specific ''development questions'' go to the '''gnucash-devel''' list.
 +
::* If you dislike the heavy traffic on the above lists, you should at least subscribe the [{{ListURL}}/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-announce gnucash-announce] list to get informed about new :releases.
 +
:To ''subscribe'' or ''view archives'' of these lists follow the links to the [[Mailing Lists]].
  
==== IRC ====
+
=== weblate.org  ===
The fastest way to get help is using the '''internet relay chat''' [[IRC]], as many of the developers hang out there and are eager to help.
+
Since 2020-12-14 the translations of some components, currently ''Glossary'', ''Program'' and ''Website'', are available at [{{URL:wl}} GnuCash @ Hosted Weblate].
 +
;Requirement: Only a ''web browser'' on your PC or mobile.
 +
;Features:
 +
* Most pages of weblate have a help page behind the <code>?</code> button.
 +
* Already as '''anonymous''' you can add ''suggestions'' and ''comments''.
 +
* After you created there an '''account''', you can edit the translations.
 +
*;Tip: If you also have a [{{URL:GH}} GitHub] account and linked it there, we can give you some feedback on your contributions.
 +
* If you already have been a '''GnuCash translator''', tell us
 +
*: on {{IRC-URL}} ([[IRC|help about IRC]]) or
 +
*: by a mail to the gnucash-devel list your Weblate name to become a weblate/GnuCash reviewer there.
 +
;Note: We appreciate any help on the optimal configuration by '''experienced weblate users'''. You can contact the GnuCash team by {{IRC-URL}} or [[Mailing Lists]].
  
==== Mailing lists ====
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==== Other Web Based Translation Tools ====
Translators will probably find two or three gnucash mailing lists of interest. If you can not find the answers to your questions in their [[Mailing_Lists#Mailing List Archives]], feel free to ask them.
+
Several services for translation coordination exist, see [[Improve Localization Process#Web Based Translation Tools]]. As we have no experience with them contact the gnucash-devel mailing list before using them.
* For ''language and region specific questions'', where you should discuss terms and ask for proofreading of your work, use your languages mailing list. Currently we have
 
*: '''gnucash-'''[pt_]'''br''',''' de''',''' es''',''' fr''',''' it''',''' nl'''.
 
: If none exists for your language or nobody has an answer there, use the english lists:
 
* ''General use questions'' and answers are found on the '''gnucash-users''' mailing list,
 
* specific ''development questions'' go to the '''gnucash-devel''' list.
 
* If you dislike the heavy traffic on the above lists, you should at least subscribe the [https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-announce gnucash-announce] list to get informed about new releases.
 
  
To ''subscribe'' or ''view archives'' of these lists follow the links to the [[Mailing Lists]].
+
=== translationproject.org ===
 +
The [{{URL:TP}} Translation Project] coordinates the ''message cataloges'' of several '''programs'''
 +
;Up to Gnucash 4.9 (2021-12): some of our translators had used it: [{{URL:TP}}obsolete/gnucash/?C=M;O=D last files]. Most of them are now using Weblate.
  
=== GNU Translation Project ===
+
=== Classical Direct Contribution ===
The [http://translationproject.org/ GNU Translation Project] coordinates the ''message cataloges'' of several ''programs''; you can see which ''languages'' they host on their [http://translationproject.org/domain/gnucash.html GnuCash page] and learn about their process [http://translationproject.org/html/translators.html here].
+
If you want to work on a new translation and you want to submit it directly to GnuCash, read on.
  
If you want to help with an existing Translation Project translation or add a new translation under their aegis, please contact the ''language team'' using the information on their [https://translationproject.org/team/ team page].
+
If you're starting a new translation it's much easier to begin with a tarball, which will include <tt>po/gnucash.pot</tt>; if you start from a [[Git]] clone you'll have to [[Building|build]] Gnucash yourself first to generate <tt>gnucash.pot</tt>.
  
==== Coordinating Message Catalog Translations ====
+
=== On Other Sites ===
 +
;Technical Reference: For many components we use the '''Gettext''' package. If you need help with <tt>msg*</tt> commands or the .po file format, read it's [{{URL:gettext-manual}} manual].
 +
;General Translations Guidelines and Tips: General information about how to approach the translation of software can be found here:
 +
:;Weblate:
 +
::* {{URL:wl doc}}
 +
:;Gnome: As GnuCash is [[GTK]] based we follow their rules for consistency.
 +
::* In [{{URL:Gnome-HIG}} GNOME Human Interface Guidelines] the most important section is ''writing-style'', but also ''keyboard-input'' is of interest for the program.
 +
::* [{{URL:Gnome-old-sg}} GNOME Documentation Style Guide V1.6]
 +
::* {{URL:GTP}}
 +
::* {{URL:GTP}}/LocalisationGuide
 +
:;KDE:
 +
::* [https://l10n.kde.org/docs/translation-howto/index.html The KDE Translation HOWTO]
  
The Translation Project requires that you use either an existing translation or <tt>gnucash.pot</tt> from the latest release as the basis for your translation.
+
;Other Useful Sites:
 +
:* Often, but not always, {{URL:wp}} has a good explanation and proper language links for special terms.
 +
:: Comparing articles on wikipedia in your language and english can be helpful.
 +
:* There are many online dictionaries, use a search engine like google, to find the best fitting.
 +
:* An index of on-line dictionaries and a lot of other resources can be found at www.yourdictionary.com.  
 +
:* In special cases the terminology database of the European Union [https://iate.europa.eu/info/documentation Inter Active Terminology for Europe] can be used, too.
  
==== Coordinating Account Templates and Documentation ====
+
== How to submit changes directly to GnuCash ==
The Translation Project handles only message catalogs, so if you have account template or documentation translations you'll submit them directly.
+
There are several options to contribute to the GnuCash translations:
  
=== Direct Contribution ===
+
===Weblate===
If you want to work on a translation that's not coordinated by the Translation Project or a new translation and you want to submit it directly to GnuCash, read on. If it's an existing translation please try to contact the last translator first using the contact information in the message catalog.
+
We recommend to use Weblate for existing languages as it has additional checks and other nice features compared to the pure gettext tools.
 +
;Online: ''One hour after you stopped editing'' it will create a commit on your behalf in its current pull request.
 +
;Offline: If you want to work offline, you can download the po file, edit it with your preferred editor, and upload it again. Weblate will then format it in the referred way before commiting it to its current pull request.
 +
;Tip: If you have a GitHub account linked to your weblate account you will get informed and can follow the process.
  
If you're starting a new translation it's much easier to begin with a tarball, which will include <tt>po/gnucash.pot</tt>; if you start from a [[Git]] clone you'll have to [[Building|build]] Gnucash yourself first to generate <tt>gnucash.pot</tt>.
+
=== Pull Requests at GitHub ===
 +
Pull requests are common for all parts which are not covered by weblate.
  
=== On Other Sites ===
+
If you already are a [{{URL:GH}} github] user you can publish your work as a separate branch on your gnucash[-{[ht]docs|on-windows}] fork and send a pull request to the GnuCash team. If you wish to continue your work before the request was completed, simlply create a new working branch. After the pull request was completed you can delete the related branch again. See [[Git]] for details.
==== General Translations Guidelines and Tips ====
+
;Commit messages:
General information about how to approach the translation of software can be found here:
+
:# Start your commit message with <tt>L10N:<LL>: </tt>
* GNU/Free TranslationProject
+
:#: were <LL>—or ${LL} below—is your language code.
** http://translationproject.org/html/translators.html
+
:# Append the intended improvement
** http://translationproject.org/html/software.html
+
:;Example: <tt>L10N:de: Update of SKR49 to official 2023 release</tt>
* Gnome
 
** Human Interface Guide https://developer.gnome.org/hig/stable/
 
** GNOME Documentation Style Guide https://developer.gnome.org/gdp-style-guide/
 
** https://wiki.gnome.org/TranslationProject
 
** https://wiki.gnome.org/TranslationProject/LocalisationGuide
 
* KDE
 
** http://l10n.kde.org/docs/translation-howto/index.html
 
  
==== Other Useful Sites ====
+
===Verify the Result===
* There are many online dictionaries, use a search engine like google, to find the best fitting.
+
After it got merged, you can …
* An index of on-line dictionaries and a lot of other resources can be found at www.yourdictionary.com.
+
:;Website: immediately open {{{URL:www}}
* Comparing articles on wikipedia in your language and english can be helpful.
+
:;Program: the next day download the (Linux) [[Flatpak#Nightly_Test_Versions_at_gnucash.org|Flatpak]] or [[Windows#Q:_Are_there_nightly_builds.3F|Windows]] nightly
* In special cases the terminology database of the European Union [http://iate.europa.eu/iatediff/SearchByQueryEdit.do Inter Active Terminology for Europe] can be used, too.
+
to see and test the reslut of your work.
  
== How to submit changes directly to GnuCash ==
+
=== Obsolete Ways ===
 +
Use they only if you have good reasons not to use one of the ways mentioned before!
  
Once you've got a translation ready for submission, there are three options:
+
==== Patches at Bugzilla ====
 +
Before it was recommend to use [[Bugzilla]]. :
 +
* [{{BugURL}}/createaccount.cgi Create an account] if you still have none or [{{BugURL}}/index.cgi?GoAheadAndLogIn=1 login],
 +
* [{{BugURL}}/enter_bug.cgi?product=GnuCash&component=Translations&bug_severity=enhancement create an ''request for enhancement'' bug against the Gnucash ''component translations''], choose the version on which your patch is based and
 +
* attach a patch
 +
:containing the diff between the old files - if any - and your new files:
 +
:* If you have [[Git]] installed, the easiest way to create the patch is <syntaxhighlight lang="sh" inline>git format-patch origin/stable..stable</syntaxhighlight>.
 +
:* Else you can use ''diffutils'': <syntaxhighlight lang="sh" inline>diff -u[r] <original path> <modified path> > <name>.patch</syntaxhighlight>. See <syntaxhighlight lang="sh" inline>info diff</syntaxhighlight> for details.
  
=== Patches at Bugzilla ===
+
==== Mailing lists ====
The easiest and safest way is to use [[Bugzilla]]: [http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=GnuCash&component=Translations&bug_severity=enhancement Create an ''request for enhancement'' bug against the Gnucash component translations] and attach a patch
+
You can simply email your completed message catalog (<tt>.po</tt> file) to the developers at the [mailto:gnucash-devel@gnucash.org gnucash-devel] mailing list. We'd really rather you use Github or Bugzilla because those are much less likely to get lost or forgotten, but if you really find those too hard we'll try to accommodate you on the list.
containing the diff between the old files - if any - and your new files. The easiest way to create the patch is <code>git format-patch origin/maint..maint</code>. See [[Git]] for details.
 
 
=== Pull Requests at Github ===
 
If you already are a github user you can publish your work as a separate branch on your gnucash[-{[ht]docs|on-windows}] fork and send a pull request. If you wish to continue your work  before the request was completed, simlply create a new working branch. After the pull request was completed you can delete that branch again. Again, see [[Git]] for details.
 
 
 
=== Mailing lists ===
 
You can simply email your completed message catalog (<tt>.po</tt> file) to the developers at the [mailto:gnucash-devel@gnucash.org gnucash-devel] mailing list. We'd really rather you use Bugzilla or Github because those are much less likely to get lost or forgotten, but if you really find those too hard we'll try to accommodate you on the list.
 
  
 
== Translating the Program ==
 
== Translating the Program ==
 
+
To begin a translation you need either the message template file (gnucash.pot) if you're starting a new translation or the existing message catalog (xx.po or xx_YY.po, where xx is the ISO code for your language and YY the ISO code for a language-variant locale, see [[#Naming Convention|Naming Convention]]). These files are in the gnucash sources, which you can obtain either from our [{{URL:GH}}gnucash.git git repository] or by downloading the latest '''release''' tarball from [https://www.sourceforge.net/projects/gnucash/files/gnucash%020(stable) Sourceforge].
To begin a translation you need either the message template file (gnucash.pot) if you're starting a new translation or the existing message catalog (xx.po or xx_YY.po, where xx is the ISO code for your language and YY the ISO code for a language-variant locale, see [[#Naming Convention|Naming Convention]]). These files are in the gnucash sources, which you can obtain either from our [https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash.git git repository] or by downloading the latest '''release''' tarball from [https://www.sourceforge.net/projects/gnucash/files/gnucash%020(stable) Sourceforge].
 
  
 
=== Get the source from Git ===
 
=== Get the source from Git ===
 +
GnuCash uses [[Git]] as version control system. If it is new for you read [[An Introduction to Git]].
  
GnuCash uses [[Git]] as a version control system. [[Git|Click here]] for an introduction to Git.
+
The first thing to do is ''usually'', to download the latest <tt>stable</tt> branch of gnucash from git and get it to build.{{Git branchs rename.ref}}
 
 
The first thing to do is ''usually'', to download the latest STABLE branch, called '''maint''', of gnucash from git and get it to compile. '''See [[Translation Status]] to choose which branch to use for translations'''.  Do not use the ''master'' branch ''unless specifically mentioned in [[Translation Status]]''.  Because the text in the ''master'' branch changes so much it would be a waste of time to translate  it.  Do not worry, when the ''master'' branch becomes stable the existing  translations in the STABLE branch will be merged.  Your work will not be lost.
 
  
Normally checkout the current stable branch if there is one:
+
Normally checkout the current stable branch: <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
git clone <nowiki>https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash</nowiki> gnucash-git
+
git clone https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash ${SOURCEDIR}
cd gnucash-git
+
cd ${SOURCEDIR}
git checkout maint
+
git checkout stable
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
  
The argument "gnucash-git" above can be whatever you want your local directory to be called,
+
The argument '''${SOURCEDIR}''' above can be whatever you want your local directory to be called,
and is optional. If you leave it out, you'll have a directory called "gnucash" created
+
and is optional in the first line. If you leave it out, you'll have a directory called <tt>gnucash</tt> created
containing all the source code below your current working dir.
+
containing all the source code ''below your current working dir''.
  
Checkout the documentation (optional, but recommended):
+
Checkout the documentation (optional, but recommended): <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
git clone <nowiki>https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash-docs</nowiki> gnucash-docs
+
git clone https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash-docs gnucash-docs
cd gnucash-docs
+
cd gnucash-docs
git checkout maint
+
git checkout stable
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
  
 
==== Update your repository ====
 
==== Update your repository ====
 
+
After this initial git checkout, you can later update your local repository using <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
After this initial git checkout, you can later update your local files using
+
git pull --rebase
git pull --rebase
+
</Syntaxhighlight>
e.g. if you noticed, the developers changed some strings.
+
from anywhere in the tree of ${SOURCEDIR}. We recommend to do it daily when you start your work.
 
 
  
 
=== Get packages, which are used while building  ===
 
=== Get packages, which are used while building  ===
 
+
* [[Dependencies]] contains the list of packages, which are used while building GnuCash. If some are missing the configuration by <tt>cmake</tt> or the build by <tt>make</tt> or <tt>ninja</tt> will fail.
[[Dependencies]] contains the list of packages, which are used while building GnuCash. Under Linux use your package manager and install that, wich are missing. Otherwise [[#autogen.sh]] or [[#configure]] will fail.
+
* For working on .po files we use several commands starting with <tt>msg</tt>. This are part of '''gettext-tools'''.
 +
:;Caution: Gettext versions < 0.20 are known not to extract the 'developer_name' xml node, which contains the msgid "GnuCash Project". Do not remove this msgid!
 +
*;Optional: [{{URL:wp}}Translate_Toolkit Translate Toolkit] is already used by Weblate and other projects. While ''gettext'' offers only a few ''formal checks'' '''Translate Toolkit''' has many ''quality checks'' in its <tt>pofilter</tt> command.
 +
Under Linux use your package manager and install them.
  
 
=== Steps in the Build System ===
 
=== Steps in the Build System ===
 +
GnuCash uses the [https://cmake.org cmake] build generator to control the build of all components. Details are described in [[Building]]. The following short-form instructions work on Unix systems and assume that you have already set up the dependencies according to [[FAQ#Q:_I_heard_it_is_too_hard_to_compile_GnuCash.21|the FAQ]]. If you are building the unstable or master branches you'll need to use your package manager to install two more development packages, boost-all-devel and googletest.
  
Most parts of GnuCash and it's documentation are using the GNU Autotools as build system. Details are described in [[Build System]].
+
==== Build system generation ====
 +
It's generally preferred to use a separate build directory. So let's set one up next to our source directory:<SyntaxHighlight lang="sh">
 +
cd /path/to/gnucash # replace the example path with your real source path
 +
mkdir ../gnucash-build
 +
cd ../gnucash-build
 +
</SyntaxHighlight>
  
==== Initialize the Autotools ====
+
Next generate a build system in the build directory. Still in the build system, exectue<SyntaxHighlight lang="sh">
 +
cmake -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=../gnucash-install ../gnucash
 +
</SyntaxHighlight>
  
Before you can use commands like <code>make <target></code> you must configure the build system. This way you can get your system set up correctly with all the development packages you need.
+
This will set up a proper build system in the build directory based on the CMakeLists.txt file in the source directory. If generation fails or if you want to refine your build consult [[Building]].
 
+
If all goes well you'll end up with a directory structure as follows:<SyntaxHighlight lang="sh">
===== autogen.sh =====
+
path/to/
 
+
  gnucash/         # directory with gnucash sources
Enter the gnucash directory and run the autogen.sh script.  This will do a few checks and generate the configure script. If it fails to generate the configure script then you are probably missing a bunch of development packages, like ''libtool gettext intltool automake autoconf'', or any of the ''-devel'' packages that supply the various autoconf macros that gnucash requires. See [[Dependencies]] to find the development packages for your system, install them, and then re-run autogen.
+
  gnucash-build/   # directory to build gnucash and its translation in
 
+
  gnucash-install/ # directory to install final result (not needed for development, just for completeness)
Note: there are some warnings that spew forth during autogen.  Do not worry about them, apparently they are normal and can be ignored.
+
</SyntaxHighlight>
 
 
;Attention!: If you are building GnuCash more than once, you will have to redo these steps every time, you ''updated'' parts of your build system or libraries on which GnuCash depends.
 
 
 
===== configure =====
 
 
 
Once you create the configure script, you should run it.  There are many options available when compiling gnucash, see the README.git file for more information on the options.  For now, we will just enable debugging and change the default prefix because these two changes will be handy later for tracking down problems and installing multiple versions.
 
 
 
cd gnucash
 
./autogen.sh
 
./configure --enable-debug --prefix=/opt/gnucash-git
 
 
 
If configure complains about '''missing development packages''', find them on your favorite OS/distribution, install it, and try to re-run the configure command.
 
See your local copy of the [https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/blob/trunk/README.dependencies README.dependencies] file for library dependency notes.
 
Also check out [[Dependencies|the dependencies page]].
 
Eventually, you should be able to get autogen to run without any error
 
messages.
 
 
 
==== Optional Compile & Install ====
 
 
 
It is suggested that you compile the gnucash source code. It is a good idea to actually run gnucash with your new translations because it is quite helpful to see the phrases in the context of the running program.
 
 
 
===== make =====
 
 
 
Next, compile gnucash:
 
 
 
  make
 
 
 
===== make install =====
 
 
 
To install (assuming "make" completed without any problems) somewhere else than in your home directory you must be root:
 
su -
 
make install
 
  
After you succeeded, you can leave the SuperUser mode with
+
==== Compile ====
exit
+
It is recommended that you compile the gnucash source code. It is a good idea to actually run gnucash with your new translations because it is quite helpful to see the phrases in the context of the running program.
  
To compile the documentation, enter the gnucash-doc directory and go
+
Compilation is done by executing the ''make'' command in the ''build directory''.
through the same process:
 
./autogen.sh
 
./configure --prefix=/opt/gnucash-git
 
make
 
su -
 
make install
 
exit
 
  
===== Running GnuCash =====
+
;Note: Experienced users may prefer to use [[Build_Tools#Ninja|Ninja]] instead of [[Build_Tools#Make|Make]]. How to so is beyond the scope of this page.
  
After installation, insure that it works by running (as a normal user,
+
<Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
no need to be root here):
+
cd ${BUILDDIR} # e.g. path/to/gnucash-build/
 +
make
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
  
/opt/gnucash-git/bin/gnucash
+
==== Run ====
 +
GnuCash can be run from the ''build directory'' as follows: <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 +
cd ${BUILDDIR} # e.g. path/to/gnucash-build/
 +
./bin/gnucash # will open gnucash you just built
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
  
It is a good idea to use absolute paths like this to insure you run  
+
Note the use of './bin/' in the line to execute gnucash. This is to make sure you run  
the proper gnucash executable. To run your OS pre-installed version of
+
the gnucash executable you just built rather than one that's installed by your distribution.
gnucash, usually you can type:
+
Omitting this explicit path specification in the command will cause your system to launch
 
+
your distribution's pre-installed version of gnucash:<Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
/usr/bin/gnucash
+
gnucash #  will open your distribution's pre-installed gnucash
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
 +
<!--FIXME: Other OSes-->
  
 
In either case, you can easily switch between the various languages the  
 
In either case, you can easily switch between the various languages the  
Line 202: Line 226:
 
executable. You can find details in [[Locale Settings]].
 
executable. You can find details in [[Locale Settings]].
  
=== Naming Convention ===
+
==== Documentation ====
 +
The ''GnuCash Help Manual'' and the ''Tutorial and Concepts Guide'' can use the same [[CMake]] build system as the code.
  
The language code is of the following form:
+
# <syntaxhighlight lang="sh" inline>git clone gnucash-docs</syntaxhighlight> or unpack a gnucash-docs tarball
:<language>[_<REGION>][.<Charset>][@modifier]
+
# Using a terminal, go to your gnucash-docs directory <SyntaxHighlight lang="sh">
using the well known ISO codes [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes 639-1] for ''languages'' and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1 3166-1] for ''territories''. Only ''if no 2 letter code exists'' for your language in 639-1, you should use the 3 letter code from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-2_codes ISO_639-2].
+
cd /path/to/gnucash-docs # replace the example path with your real path
 +
</SyntaxHighlight>
 +
# Make a build directory next to your source directory and go into it <SyntaxHighlight lang="sh">
 +
mkdir ../gnucash-docs-build
 +
cd ../gnucash-docs-build
 +
</SyntaxHighlight>
 +
# Configure the build system<SyntaxHighlight lang="sh">
 +
cmake -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=../gnucash-docs-install ../gnucash-docs
 +
</SyntaxHighlight>
 +
#: These commands will set up a directory structure as follows:<SyntaxHighlight lang="sh">
 +
path/to/
 +
  gnucash-docs/         # directory with gnucash-docs sources
 +
  gnucash-docs-build/   # directory to generate gnucash-docs in various formats
 +
  gnucash-docs-install/  # directory to install final result (not needed for development, just for completeness)
 +
</SyntaxHighlight>
 +
# still in your build directory run <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 +
make html
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
  
If you are the first translator for your language, you should name your files and directories ''only with your language code''. So all people using your language despite of their country will benefit from your work.
+
The new documentation home pages will be <syntaxhighlight lang="sh">${BUILDDIR}/share/doc/${LOCALE}/gnucash-guide/index.html</syntaxhighlight> and <syntaxhighlight lang="sh">${BUILDDIR}/share/doc/${LOCALE}/gnucash-manual/index.html</syntaxhighlight>,
 +
where ${LOCALE} is one of <tt>C, de, it, ja, or pt</tt> (English, German, Italian, Japanese, or Portuguese respectively). You can use the <tt>file:</tt> URL scheme to point your browser to one of them; the links will work from there.
  
If there are parts, which are ''specific for your country'', e.g. business account templates respecting local law, then they should be in a <language>_<COUNTRY> directory.
+
=== Naming Convention ===
 
+
The language code is of the following form:
The common '''charset''' in gnucash is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utf8 utf8].
+
:;<language>[_<REGION>][.<Charset>][@modifier]:using the well known ISO codes [{{URL:wp}}List_of_ISO_639-1_codes 639-1] for '''language'''s and [{{URL:wp}}ISO_3166-1 3166-1] for '''region'''s, which are in most cases countries .
 
+
:* Only ''if no 2 letter code exists'' for your language in ISO_639-1, use the 3 letter code from [{{URL:wp}}List_of_ISO_639-2_codes ISO_639-2].
In the rare case ''different scripts'' are used for the same language like kyrilic and latin add for the less used the '''modifier''' e.g. <tt>sr@latin</tt>.
+
* If you are the first translator for your language, you should
 
+
** name your files and directories ''only with your language code''.
In the following parts of this document 'XXXX' and 'LL' refer to your language code.
+
** set <tt>Language:</tt> in the header of your po file with the full (language and region) code, if significant.
 
+
: So all people using your language despite of their region will benefit from your work.
=== Contact the maintainer of your language ===
+
* If there are parts, which are ''specific for your region'', e.g. business account templates respecting local law, then they should be in a <language>_<REGION> directory.
 
+
* The common '''charset''' in gnucash is [{{URL:wp}}Utf8 utf8].
To find out who is the last person to work on your language, look near the
+
* In the rare case ''different scripts'' are used for the same language like kyrilic and latin add for the less used the '''modifier''' e.g. <tt>sr@latin</tt>.
top of the po/XXXX.po file which corresponds to your language.  If your
 
language does not have a .po file available, see the next section.
 
 
 
The beginning of your .po file should look something similar to this:
 
<syntaxhighlight lang="po">
 
# Localization for Portuguese-Brazil
 
# Copyright (C) 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
 
# Jon Lapham <lapham@extracta.com.br>, 2003
 
# Jose Carlos Nascimento - <joseca@psabs.com>, 2001.
 
#
 
msgid ""
 
msgstr ""
 
"Project-Id-Version: GnuCash 1.8.3\n"
 
"POT-Creation-Date: 2003-05-16 16:42-0300\n"
 
"PO-Revision-Date: 2003-06-02 12:00-0300\n"
 
"Last-Translator: Jon Lapham <lapham@extracta.com.br>\n"
 
"Language-Team: NONE \n"
 
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
 
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1\n"
 
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
 
"Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=n != 1;\n"
 
</syntaxhighlight>
 
  
Look to see who the "Last-translator" was, and send an email to that person
+
In the following parts of this document 'XXXX' and 'LL'—often prefixed by <tt>$</tt> to mark them as variable—refer to your language code.
and ask what you can do to help.  This is important because if there already
 
is an active maintainer of the translation file, you should interact directly
 
with him or her.  If there is no Last-Translator, or that person is not
 
maintaining the file actively (and tells you to take over or does not answer in reasonable time), you will become
 
the maintainer and you should change the "Last-Translator" to your name and
 
email address.
 
  
 
=== The glossary file ===
 
=== The glossary file ===
 
 
Inside the po/glossary/ directory should be a "glossary" file for your  
 
Inside the po/glossary/ directory should be a "glossary" file for your  
 
language.  This file contains a bunch of ''commonly used terms'' found in GnuCash - and the explanation of a few very specific for GnuCash like the disambiguation between ''bill'', ''invoice'' and ''voucher''.
 
language.  This file contains a bunch of ''commonly used terms'' found in GnuCash - and the explanation of a few very specific for GnuCash like the disambiguation between ''bill'', ''invoice'' and ''voucher''.
 
It is recommended that you '''get this file translated first''', and use it as a  
 
It is recommended that you '''get this file translated first''', and use it as a  
guide when translating the real .po file or the documentation.  Please keep in mind that this file will ''never be visible to a user''! The glossary file is only a tool for you, the translator! I repeat: The strings from the glossary file will ''never'' be user-visible, they are only used by you, the translator.
+
guide when translating the real .po file or the documentation.  Please keep in mind that this file will ''never be visible to a user''! The glossary file is only a tool for you, the translators! I repeat: The strings from the glossary file will ''never'' be user-visible, they are only used by you, the translator.
  
Go into the glossary directory and rebuild your language's glossary file:
+
::;Todo: The current files have a very informal form. To make them more useful like conversion in tool specific glossary formats, we should replace <syntaxhighlight lang="po">
 
+
msgid "generic term: term"
cd po/glossary/
+
</syntaxhighlight> by <syntaxhighlight lang="po">
./txt-to-pot.sh gnc-glossary.txt > gnc-glossary.pot
+
msgctxt "generic term"
 +
msgid "term"
 +
</syntaxhighlight>
  
If your .po glossary file does not exist, use this gnc-glossary.pot file to
+
# Go into the glossary directory: <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
create it:
+
cd po/glossary/
 
+
</Syntaxhighlight>
cp gnc-glossary.pot XXXX.po
+
# If your .po glossary file ''does not exist'' or ''is older than'' <tt>gnc-glossary.txt</tt>, create the template: <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 
+
./txt-to-pot.sh gnc-glossary.txt > gnc-glossary.pot
If your .po glossary file does exist, use the msgmerge program to update it:
+
</Syntaxhighlight>
 
+
# Create or update your language's glossary file:
/usr/bin/msgmerge -o XXXX.po XXXX.po gnc-glossary.pot;
+
#* If your .po glossary file ''does not exist'',  
 
+
## use this gnc-glossary.pot file to create it with <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
Now, open your language's glossary file and translate it completely.
+
msginit # add -l<locale> if different from your settings
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
 +
## Add your file into the <tt>set_dist_list(po_glossary_DIST ...)</tt> command in <tt>glossary/CMakeLists.txt</tt> <Syntaxhighlight lang="cmake">
 +
set_dist_list(po_glossary_DIST CMakeLists.txt bg.po ca.po da.po de.po el.po es_NI-policy.txt es.po fr.po gnc-glossary.txt he.po
 +
        hr.po hu.po it.po nb.po nl.po pl.po pt_BR.po pt.po ru.po rw.po sk.po sv.po txt-to-pot.sh vi.po zh_CN.po zh_TW.po)
 +
</Syntaxhighlight> to get it into the tarball.
 +
## After changing CMakeLists.txt you have to rerun <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 +
cmake # add your options
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
 +
#* If your .po glossary file ''exists'', but is older than <tt>gnc-glossary.txt</tt> use the msgmerge program to update it: <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 +
msgmerge --previous -U $LL.po gnc-glossary.pot;
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
 +
# Now open your language's glossary file and translate it completely.
 +
# Don't forget to [[#Check syntax and statistics of your .po file]].
  
 
==== Terms missing or inadequate in the glossary file ====
 
==== Terms missing or inadequate in the glossary file ====
 
+
If you detect an important term which is missing or could be better explained,
If you detect an important term which is missing or could be better explained, [[Bugzilla#Using_Bugzilla|open a bug]] and add a [[Git#Patches|patch]] for the ''source file'' '''gnc-glossary.txt'''.
+
* create a pull request at github
The - with the exception of the headline - alphabetical sorted lines of this file have the form:
+
: for the ''source file'' '''gnc-glossary.txt'''.
Msgid<TAB>Comment
+
With the exception of the header the lines of this file are alphabetical sorted and have the form: <Syntaxhighlight lang="text">
 
+
Msgid<TAB>Comment
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
 +
:;Reminder: Does your editor enter <TAB>s or will it replace them with <Space>s?
 
To test it, run the following steps after you changed gnc-glossary.txt:
 
To test it, run the following steps after you changed gnc-glossary.txt:
* <code>./txt-to-pot.sh gnc-glossary.txt > gnc-glossary.pot</code> will generate a new gnc-glossary.pot,
+
# To generate a new gnc-glossary.pot: <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
* run above ''msgmerge'' command for your XXXX.po and check it for the new msg,
+
./txt-to-pot.sh gnc-glossary.txt > gnc-glossary.pot</Syntaxhighlight>
* if successful, update all *.po files with:
+
# run above ''msgmerge'' command for your LL.po,
find *.po -exec /usr/bin/msgmerge -o '{}' '{}' gnc-glossary.pot \;
+
# check and translate the new string in this updated glossary file.
* check and translate the new string in your new glossary file.
+
# If successful, update all *.po files with: <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 +
for i in *.po; do echo -n "$i:"; LANG=C msgmerge --previous -U $i gnc-glossary.pot ; done
 +
#old form: find *.po -exec /usr/bin/msgmerge --previous -U '{}' gnc-glossary.pot \;
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
 +
;Note: The last step can also be done by a maintainer.
 +
:<tt>LANG=C</tt> is only recommend for maintainers to get english error messages.
  
 
=== Get a fresh template ===
 
=== Get a fresh template ===
 +
The ''Portable Object Template'' (.pot file) is a collection of all translatable strings.
  
The Portable Object Template (.pot file) is a collection of all translatable strings.
+
It is important, to repeat this step e.g. after you asked a developer to change an insufficient string or you got an announcement about changed strings like commit messages starting with "<tt>I18N: </tt>" or containing a "<tt>[I18N]</tt>" flag.
 
 
It is important, to repeat this step e.g. after you asked a developer to change an insufficient string or you got an announcement about changed strings.
 
 
 
* If your repository is no fresh checkout, you should first [[#Update your repository]]:
 
git pull --rebase
 
* Then in gnucash, a specific command ''at the '''top-level''' of the build tree'' (or source tree, if you do not use a separate build directory) will perform all necessary steps for this:
 
make pot
 
  
'''Note:''' If make complains "<tt>make: *** No rule to make target `<path/to/missing-source-file>', needed by `gnucash.pot'. Stop.</tt>", you should run
+
:;Tip: If you have problems with this section, you download instead the "current template" from [{{URL:TP}}domain/gnucash.html the translationproject.org]. But keep in mind it is based on the last release and does not contain recent changes.
make clean
 
and then retry "<code>make pot</code>". That can happen because we sometimes remove obsolete files.
 
  
Now go in the po directory:
+
# If your repository is no fresh checkout, you should first [[#Update your repository]]: <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
cd po
+
git pull --rebase
 
+
</Syntaxhighlight>
If your language file ''already exists'', continue with [[#Updating an existing .po file]].
+
# Only on the first run see [[Building]] to set up your build environment depending on your OS.
 +
#;Note: As you can use <tt>make</tt> or <tt>ninja</tt>, on this page we write always <tt>make <target></tt>. If you decided to use ninja, execute <tt>ninja <target></tt> instead.
 +
# Then in gnucash, a specific command ''at the '''top-level''' of the build tree'' (or source tree, if you do not use a separate build directory) will perform all necessary steps for this: <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 +
cd ${BUILDDIR} # adjust ${BUILDDIR}
 +
make pot
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
 +
# If make complains <Syntaxhighlight lang="console" inline>make: *** No rule to make target `<path/to/missing-source-file>', needed by `gnucash.pot'.  Stop.
 +
</Syntaxhighlight> there are obsolete relicts from a previous build. Just run <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 +
make clean  # remove obsolete files
 +
make pot    # try it again
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
 +
# Now go into the po directory: <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 +
cd ${SOURCEDIR}/po # adjust ${SOURCEDIR}
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
 +
If your language file ''already exists'', continue with [[#Update an existing .po file]].
  
 
=== Build a new .po file ===
 
=== Build a new .po file ===
Line 318: Line 360:
 
: -l... is only required, if your target is different from your environments current language.
 
: -l... is only required, if your target is different from your environments current language.
 
This will initialize the meta information with values from your user environment.
 
This will initialize the meta information with values from your user environment.
;Note: msginit 0.19.3 is querying an obsolete address of the translation project for language teams, but that doesn't matter.
+
;Notes:
 +
:;msginit 0.21.1: seems not to know languages spoken in and around India very well. Replace <SyntaxHighlight lang="po">"Plural-Forms: nplurals=INTEGER; plural=EXPRESSION;\n"
 +
</SyntaxHighlight> by <SyntaxHighlight lang="po">"Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=n != 1;\n"</SyntaxHighlight> —or whatever is right— in the new created file.
 +
:;msginit 0.19.3: is querying an obsolete address of the translation project for language teams, but that doesn't matter.
  
 
If that does not work you can copy the file <tt>gnucash.pot</tt> into a work file named <tt>LL.po</tt> and just edit this file.
 
If that does not work you can copy the file <tt>gnucash.pot</tt> into a work file named <tt>LL.po</tt> and just edit this file.
  
==== Adjust the header and special strings====
+
==== Adjust the header ====
 +
Only if it was not created by [[#Build_a_new_.po_file|msginit]] and updated via weblate the top of the .po file should be edited slightly.
  
The top of the .po file should be edited somewhat.  The comments at the  
+
;Header Comments: The comments at the top of the file should be changed to be current: <SyntaxHighlight lang="po">
top of the file should be changed to be current:
+
# Indonesian translations for GnuCash package.
 
+
# Terjemahan bahasa Indonesia untuk paket GnuCash.
<SyntaxHighlight lang="po">
+
# Copyright (C) 2020 by the GnuCash developers and the translators listed below.# This file is distributed under the same license as the GnuCash package.
# Messages in Deutsch fuer GnuCash
+
# Triyan W. Nugroho <triyan.wn@gmail.com>, 2020.
# Copyright (C) 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+
# […]
# Jan-Uwe Finck <Jan-Uwe.Finck@bigfoot.de>, 1999.
+
</SyntaxHighlight>
 +
:;Copyright: Only files which were once maintained by the [[#translationproject.org]] should have a FSF copyright for that time range.
 +
::Perhaps we should use and update a copyright year range?
 +
:;Translator List:Weblate will expand the copyright comment by a list of
 +
::<code><Translator name> <email address>, year[ range]</code>
 +
::in historical order. You can later copy the list into [[#Adjust_special_messages|translator-credits]] ideally in reverse order.
 +
:;Conventions of your team (optional): This is also a good place to record ''typographic conventions'', if more than one person work on the file: <SyntaxHighlight lang="po">
 +
#
 +
# Konventionen/Tastenkürzel:
 +
# »Zitate«: [AltGr]+{[Y]|[X]}
 +
# Gedankenstrich — [AltGr]+[Shift]+[-]
 
</SyntaxHighlight>
 
</SyntaxHighlight>
  
Make sure that the header of your .po file contains an adjusted form, e.g. for slavian languages set nplurals=3, of this line:
+
;Header Record: The first, empty msgid "" contains information for you and the gettext tools. Each line of the msgstr contains a '''capitalized entry''', a colon and a value. ''Replace all variables (uppercase words)'' with something appropriate. In this case, you will be the first author of the translation, and also the
<SyntaxHighlight lang="po">
+
:;Last-Translator: ''your name'' and ''email address'', usually set by weblate. This person responsible for the recent change set, so we need an email address to contact you if there are issues.
 +
:;Language-Team: Most languages are maintained by teams and everybody wants to get informed. That is usually the weblate language team. Before [[#translationproject.org]] or the german Gnucash translator team have been in use.
 +
:: If you are not using weblate enter the  teams name and email address. If you are no member of a team, keep it empty or write <code>NONE</code>.
 +
::;Tip: You can reuse this line in [[#Adjust_special_messages|translator-credits]].
 +
:;Language: Already set by <code>msginit</code> it should be the same as the filename without extension, usually the ISO code of your language.
 +
:;Project-Id-Version: <Package name> (set by <code>msgint</code>) and <Version> (updated on  msgmerges).
 +
:;Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: Should already been set by <code>msginit</code> to <code>{{BugURL}}/buglist.cgi?roduct=GnuCash&component=Translations</code> or similar, where you can report issues with the <code>msgid</code>s like
 +
::* "There is a typo in <msgid>" or
 +
::* "<msgid> is impossible to translate to <your language> because of the grammatical difference …"
 +
::if nobody reacts on your comments in weblate.
 +
:;POT-Creation-Date: gets updated by <code>msgmerge</code>.
 +
:;PO-Revision-Date: The timestamp of the last modification.
 +
::* Weblate and editors with a specific po mode should update it automatically.
 +
::* If you use a normal text editor, you will have to do it manually.
 +
:;Content Section: Do not change <syntaxhighlight lang="po">
 +
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
 +
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n"
 +
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
 +
</syntaxhighlight> but replace its older forms like <syntaxhighlight lang="po">
 +
"CHARSET: UTF-8\n"
 +
"ENCODING: 8bit\n"
 +
</syntaxhighlight> with the recent form.
 +
:;Plural-Forms: <code>msginit</code> should have set it properly. E.g. many slavian languages have complexer rules than English's <SyntaxHighlight lang="po">
 
"Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=n != 1;\n"
 
"Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=n != 1;\n"
 
</SyntaxHighlight>
 
</SyntaxHighlight>
 +
::See [{{URL:gettext-manual}}#Translating-plural-forms Gettext Manual: Translating Plural Forms] for details.
 +
:See the full explanation in [{{URL:gettext-manual}}#Header-Entry Gettext Manual: Header Entry].
 +
:* Remove the `#, fuzzy' line once you have specified the items in capitals, because once this is done the header entry is no longer fuzzy.
  
...and that you change the "Last-translator" string to your name.
+
==== Adjust special messages ====
 +
* There is currently one '''special string''': <SyntaxHighlight lang="po">
 +
#: gnucash/gnome-utils/gnc-main-window.c:4737
 +
msgid "translator-credits"
 +
msgstr ""
 +
"Christian Stimming, 2001-2021\n"
 +
:
 +
"Jan-Uwe Finck, 1999\n"
 +
"\n"
 +
"Anregungen, Kritik und Fragen zur Übersetzung an die\n"
 +
"deutschsprachige GnuCash-Gemeinschaft <gnucash-de@gnucash.org>\n"
 +
"Um die Moderation zu vermeiden, empfiehlt sich die Anmeldung auf der\n"
 +
"<a\
 +
href=\"https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-de\">Liste "
 +
"gnucash-de</a>"
  
The first lines as shown in the previous section will contain several '''capitalized entries'''. ''Replace all the words in capitals'' with something appropriate. In this case, you will be the first author of the translation, and also the
+
</SyntaxHighlight>
* last translator of it.
+
:This will appear in <tt>Help->About->Credits->Translation</tt>. So you should enter your ''name'' or that of your team and an ''email'' address where users can contact you for typos and gifts.
* CHARSET may be UTF8 for example, and  
+
:;Tip: After some time more persons would have worked on the translation. Then you can expand it from your header comments to: <SyntaxHighlight lang="po">
* ENCODING is usually 8bit.  
+
msgstr ""
Remove the `#, fuzzy' line once you have specified the items in capitals, because once this is done the header entry is no longer fuzzy.  
+
"<current translator>, <years>\n"
 +
"<previous translator>, <years>\n"
 +
:
 +
"<first translator>, <years>\n"
 +
"\n"
 +
"Send suggestions, critizism and questions about this translation to\n"
 +
"Klingon speaking GnuCash community <gnucash-tlh@gnucash.org>\n."
 +
"To avoid moderation we recommend to subscribe at\n"
 +
"<a
 +
# This comment exists only to trick the spamfilter. Rejoin the surrounding lines again.
 +
href=\"https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-tlh\">List gnucash-tlh</a>"
 +
# Don't forget to replace Klingon (tlh) by your language and translate the rest!
 +
</SyntaxHighlight> If a list exists, we suggest to remove the email address of individuals for data protection reasons.
  
There is currently one '''special string''':
+
==== Prepopulate your file with translations from your glossary and other projects ====
 +
The basic idea is decribed in [{{URL:gettext-manual}}#Compendium Gettext Manual: Using Translation Compendia]. Your translator tools might already support compendia. If not, i.e you are using a plain text editor, here is the manual way:
  
<SyntaxHighlight lang="po">
+
There are in total 3 programms in use:
#: ../src/gnome-utils/gnc-main-window.c:4389
+
:;msgcat: Concatenates and merges the specified PO files.
msgid "translator_credits"
+
:;msgmerge: Merges two or more Uniforum style .po files together.
msgstr "Christian Stimming <christian@cstimming.de> et. al."
+
:;msgattrib: Filters the messages of a translation catalog according to their attributes or manipulates their attributes.
 +
 
 +
:;Example: To merge a compendiumn like our glossary: <SyntaxHighlight lang="sh">
 +
cd ${SRCDIR}/po
 +
# Gettext manual's suggestion to merge compendia without old po file:
 +
msgmerge --compendium glossary/${LL}.po -o ${LL}.po /dev/null ${BUILDDIR}/po/gnucash.pot
 +
# Perhaps better:
 +
msgmerge -U ${LL}.po --compendium glossary/${LL}.po ${BUILDDIR}/po/gnucash.pot
 
</SyntaxHighlight>
 
</SyntaxHighlight>
  
This will appear in <tt>Help->About->Credits->Translation</tt>. So you should enter your ''name'' or that of your team and an ''email'' address where users can contact you for typos and gifts.
+
===== GOffice =====
 +
Gnucash has borrowed a couple of source files from [{{URL:GH}}GNOME/goffice goffice]. Those files contain a number of translatable strings. The goffice translation teams have already put effort in translating those in many languages. To reduce our translation effort, the script linked in [[I18N#Borrowing Code]] can be used to import these translations into our own po files.
 +
 
 +
If the goffice part for your language is incomplete, you might consider to offer them to update their file with your work.
 +
 
 +
===== GTK3 =====
 +
Stock buttons became deprecated in their version 3.10. They included:
 +
# a label with mnemonic,
 +
# for which the translation was already done in the gtk domain,
 +
# a unique icon was associated.
 +
 
 +
So they are no longer used since gnucash 3.0. We use still the same labels, but the GTK translation is not directly used.
 +
 
 +
You can save some work by merging the po file of your language from GTK3, i.e. from https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/tree/gtk-3-24/po into your gnucash po file.
  
==== Adjust configure.ac ====
+
:;Example: To merge fitting translations from GOffice and GTK: <SyntaxHighlight lang="sh">
 +
#Example to merge common parts from po files in GOffice and GTK
  
Also include your language code into the ''NEW_LINGUAS variable'' in the '''configure.ac''' file ''in the top level folder'' of the source package:
+
# Variant A: in single steps to watch their results
 +
## 1. join 3. party translations
 +
msgcat --use-first -o tmp.po ${LL}.po ${GOFFICEPATH}/po/${LL}.po ${GTKPATH}/po/${LL}.po
 +
## 2. Remove unused messages. Authoritativ is gnucash.pot:
 +
msgmerge tmp.po ${BUILDDIR}/po/gnucash.pot | msgattrib --no-obsolete > {$LL}.po
 +
rm tmp.po
  
<SyntaxHighlight lang="sh" highlight="8">
+
# Variant B: in one command:
dnl Set of available languages:
+
msgcat --use-first ${LL}.po ${GOFFICEPATH}/po/${LL}.po ${GTKPATH}/po/${LL}.po | \
dnl managed at the Translation Project:
+
msgmerge ${BUILDDIR}/po/gnucash.pot | \
TP_LINGUAS="az ca cs da eu fa ja nl rw sk sr sv tr uk zh_CN"
+
msgattrib --no-obsolete > {$LL}.po
dnl already marked as external at TP:
+
</SyntaxHighlight>
GC_LINGUAS="ar bg de el en_GB es fi fr gu he hi hu it kn ko lt lv mr nb ne pl pt pt_BR ro ru ta te ur vi zh_TW "
 
dnl New or unmarked: The release manager should announce them to TP
 
dnl and when listed there move in the respective group above.
 
NEW_LINGUAS="as brx doi es_NI kok kok@latin ks mai mni mni@bengali"
 
  
ALL_LINGUAS="$TP_LINGUAS $GC_LINGUAS $NEW_LINGUAS"
+
==== Adjust po/CMakeLists.txt ====
 +
Also include your language code into the ''NEW_LINGUAS variable'' in the [{{URL:GH}}Gnucash/gnucash/blob/stable/po/CMakeLists.txt#L3-L4 CMakeLists.txt] file in the ''po folder'' of your ''source directory'': <SyntaxHighlight lang="sh" highlight="8">
 +
# Set of available languages:
 +
set (ALL_LINGUAS ar as az bg brx ca cs da de doi el en_GB es es_NI et eu fa fi fr gu he hi hr hu id it ja kn ko kok kok@latin ks lt lv mai mni mni@bengali mr nb ne nl pl pt pt_BR ro rw sk sr sv ru ta te tr uk ur vi zh_CN zh_TW)
 
</SyntaxHighlight>
 
</SyntaxHighlight>
  
As the name suggests, ''configure.ac'' is a file, which controls the configure process. So after changing it, you have to '''rerun [[#configure|configure]]'''. Some IDEs like [[Eclipse]] will do it automagical for you.  
+
''CMakeLists.txt'' is a file, which controls the configuration of the ''build process''. So after changing it, you have to '''rerun cmake'''. Some IDEs like [[Eclipse]] will do it automagical for you.  
  
So that <tt>LL.gmo</tt> file is generated in ./po directory during ''make install'', otherwise your translated language won't appear.
+
As part of the build your <tt>LL.gmo</tt> file is generated in the po directory of your build tree. Finally ''make install'' will copy it to the place, where it will be found at runtime. If you forget one of the steps, your translated language will not appear.
  
 
Continue with [[#Translating the .po file]].
 
Continue with [[#Translating the .po file]].
  
=== Updating an existing .po file ===
+
=== Update an existing .po file ===
  
 
Before you begin actual translation work, you should update the gnucash.pot  
 
Before you begin actual translation work, you should update the gnucash.pot  
Line 385: Line 518:
 
you have the latest translatable strings.
 
you have the latest translatable strings.
  
If your language file ''already exists'', update it using the ''msgmerge'' program. This will move the old translations of unchanged strings in the new file:
+
If your language file ''already exists'', update it using the ''msgmerge'' program. This will move the old translations of unchanged strings in the new file: <syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 +
msgmerge --previous -U LL.po gnucash.pot
 +
</syntaxhighlight>
 +
;Note: If you had choosen a ''separate build directory'', e.g. <tt>.build</tt>, adjust the path in above command: <syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 +
cd ${SRCDIR}/po # adjust ${SRCDDIR}
 +
export BUILDDIR=../build # adjust this
 +
msgmerge --previous -U LL.po ${BUILDDIR}/po/gnucash.pot
 +
</syntaxhighlight>
  
  /usr/bin/msgmerge -o LL.new.po LL.po gnucash.pot
+
;Separate commits for "noise" and real work: You should now run <tt>git commit</tt> or ''create a patch'' <tt>"L10N:<locale>: Merge recent template"</tt>.
mv LL.new.po LL.po
+
: This will contain only the "noise" from the updated pot file as usually many line numbers change.
 +
:; Diff example after msgmerge: <syntaxhighlight lang="diff">
 +
  #. Business options
 +
-#: ../src/app-utils/app-utils.scm:303
 +
-#: ../src/business/business-gnome/gncmod-business-gnome.c:117
 +
+#: ../src/app-utils/app-utils.scm:322
 +
+#: ../src/business/business-gnome/gncmod-business-gnome.c:119
 +
msgid "Business"
 +
msgstr "Geschäft"
 +
</syntaxhighlight>
 +
:Hiding your real changes in hundreds of such sections will make it really hard for your coworkers to find them.
  
'''Note:''' If you had choosen a ''separate build directory'', e.g. <tt>build</tt>, adjust the path in above command:
+
After having done your [[#Translate the strings|translation]] you [[#Submitting|submit]] a second commit or patch containing your actual work <tt>"Update <locale>.po"</tt>.
/usr/bin/msgmerge -o LL.new.po LL.po ../build/po/gnucash.pot
 
mv LL.new.po LL.po
 
  
;Attention!: You should now run <tt>git commit</tt> or ''create a patch'' "Merge updated po template in <ll>.po". This will contain only the "noise" from the updated pot file as usually many line numbers change. Example of unchanged messages:
+
You should also do it, if your current translation tool uses '''other format settings''' like line breaks as the previous tool. In this case just open the file, save it and <tt>git commit</tt> or ''create a patch'' <tt>"L10N:<locale>: Preparation: Reformating"</tt>.
 +
:;Example in KBabel format: <syntaxhighlight lang="po">
 +
#: ../src/app-utils/business-prefs.scm:33
 +
msgid "The format string to use for generating customer numbers. This is a printf-style format string."
 +
msgstr "Используемая строка форматирования для создания номеров клиентов. Её формат соответствует printf."
 +
</syntaxhighlight>
 +
:;Example in PoEDit format: <syntaxhighlight lang="po">
 +
#: ../src/app-utils/business-prefs.scm:33
 +
msgid ""
 +
"The format string to use for generating customer numbers. This is a printf-"
 +
"style format string."
 +
msgstr ""
 +
"Используемая строка форматирования для создания номеров клиентов. Её формат "
 +
"соответствует printf."
 +
</syntaxhighlight>
  
  #. Business options
+
;Review the file header:
-#: ../src/app-utils/app-utils.scm:303
+
* <tt>Project-Id-Version should be ''GnuCash {{Version}}'' and
-#: ../src/business/business-gnome/gncmod-business-gnome.c:117
+
: <tt>POT-Creation-Date</tt> should be recent. If they are not, you probably forgot [[#Get a fresh template]] or [[#Updating an existing .po file]].
+#: ../src/app-utils/app-utils.scm:322
 
+#: ../src/business/business-gnome/gncmod-business-gnome.c:119
 
  msgid "Business"
 
  msgstr "Geschäft"
 
 
 
Hiding your real changes in hundreds of such sections will make it really hard for your coworkers to find them.
 
 
 
You should also do it, if your current translation tool use other format settings like line breaks as the previous tool. In this case just open the file, save it and <tt>git commit</tt> or ''create a patch'' "Preparing patch: reformating <ll>.po".
 
 
 
Example of KBabel
 
#: ../src/app-utils/business-prefs.scm:33
 
msgid "The format string to use for generating customer numbers. This is a printf-style format string."
 
msgstr "Используемая строка форматирования для создания номеров клиентов. Её формат соответствует printf."
 
vs. PoEDit format:
 
#: ../src/app-utils/business-prefs.scm:33
 
msgid ""
 
"The format string to use for generating customer numbers. This is a printf-"
 
"style format string."
 
msgstr ""
 
"Используемая строка форматирования для создания номеров клиентов. Её формат "
 
"соответствует printf."
 
 
 
Review the file header:
 
 
* The <tt>PO-Revision-Date</tt> should be >= <tt>POT-Creation-Date</tt>.
 
* The <tt>PO-Revision-Date</tt> should be >= <tt>POT-Creation-Date</tt>.
 +
Some, but not all tools will do this reliably for you.
  
 
=== Translating the .po file ===
 
=== Translating the .po file ===
Line 431: Line 571:
  
 
==== Tools ====
 
==== Tools ====
 
 
Some ''plain text editors'' offer a specific ''syntax highlighting for .po file''s, but there are also specific tools you can use:
 
Some ''plain text editors'' offer a specific ''syntax highlighting for .po file''s, but there are also specific tools you can use:
* ''Poedit'' ( get it here: http://www.poedit.net/download.php ) to finish the PO file edit and build.
+
* [{{URL:wp}}Emacs Emacs] has a po-mode to edit po files.
 +
* [{{URL:wp}}Geany Geany], an editor with sytax highlighting and a little bit more
 +
* [{{URL:wp}}Gtranslator GTranslator] is another tool but we recommend not to use it because the version of 2006 doesn't support all of the interesting elements inside the po file. Update this, if you know it is fixed.
 +
* ''Lokalize'' is the successor of KBabel since KDE4.
 +
* ''[https://poedit.net/ Poedit]'' to finish the PO file edit and build.
 +
: [{{ListURL}}/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2018-September/042808.html Version 2.1.1 had issues]
 
* ''[https://poeditor.com/ POEditor]'' can be used online.
 
* ''[https://poeditor.com/ POEditor]'' can be used online.
* ''KBabel'' is another recommended tool.
+
* ''[http://pology.nedohodnik.net/ Pology] is a Python library and collection of command-line tools for in-depth processing of PO files. Recommended in the Gettext Manual, but last released 2014-07-24.
* ''Lokalize'' is the successor of KBabel in KDE4.
+
* ''[{{URL:wp}}Translate_Toolkit translate-toolkit]'' is a python based suite. It is also used by sevices like weblate.
* ''Emacs'' has the po-mode to edit po files.
+
* Wikipedia:
* ''[http://docs.translatehouse.org/projects/translate-toolkit/en/latest/index.html translate-toolkit]'' is a python based suite.
+
** [{{URL:wp}}List_of_translation_software List of translation software]
* GTranslator is another tool but we recommend not to use it because the version of 2006 doesn't support all of the interesting elements inside the po file.
+
** [{{URL:wp}}Comparison_of_computer-assisted_translation_tools Comparison of computer-assisted translation tools]
 
(feel free to add more tools here)
 
(feel free to add more tools here)
  
 
==== Gettext source (.po) file format ====
 
==== Gettext source (.po) file format ====
A record in a po file has the following form:
+
===== Record Format =====
<syntaxhighlight lang="po"><empty or only white-space>
+
A record in a po file has the following form: <syntaxhighlight lang="po"><empty or only white-space>
 
#  translator-comments
 
#  translator-comments
 
#. extracted-comments
 
#. extracted-comments
 
#: reference…
 
#: reference…
 
#, flag…
 
#, flag…
 +
#| msgctxt previous-message-context
 
#| msgid previous-untranslated-string
 
#| msgid previous-untranslated-string
 +
msgctxt optional-message-context
 
msgid untranslated-string
 
msgid untranslated-string
 
msgstr translated-string
 
msgstr translated-string
Line 456: Line 602:
 
*In ''translator-comments'' you can put your own notes.
 
*In ''translator-comments'' you can put your own notes.
 
*The ''extracted-comments'' are notes from the programmers for you.
 
*The ''extracted-comments'' are notes from the programmers for you.
* One ore more ''reference''s tell you, where the message appears in the sources.
+
* One or more ''reference''s tell you, where the message appears in the sources.
* The most important ''flags'' will be explained below.
+
* The most important ''flags'' will be explained below in [[# Common Flags]] and [[#Special characters and other tips|source language format flag]] will be explained below.
 +
* The ''previous-*'' entries will only appear, after <tt>msgmerge --previous …</tt> for fuzzy messages to show what changed.
 +
* An ''optional-message-context'' has the purpose to distinguish equal msgids with different meanings.
 
* The ''msg*'' should explain themself above.
 
* The ''msg*'' should explain themself above.
  
 
;Example:Here is an example of translating some text into German:
 
;Example:Here is an example of translating some text into German:
 
+
:;Before: <syntaxhighlight lang="po">
Before:<syntaxhighlight lang="po">
 
 
#: messages-i18n.c:11
 
#: messages-i18n.c:11
 
msgid ""
 
msgid ""
Line 469: Line 616:
 
msgstr ""
 
msgstr ""
 
</syntaxhighlight>
 
</syntaxhighlight>
After, the translation in the de.po file:
+
:;After, the translation in the de.po file: <syntaxhighlight lang="po">
<syntaxhighlight lang="po">
 
 
#: messages-i18n.c:11
 
#: messages-i18n.c:11
 
msgid ""
 
msgid ""
Line 479: Line 625:
 
"Der GNU-Weg, ihr Geld zu verwalten!"
 
"Der GNU-Weg, ihr Geld zu verwalten!"
 
</syntaxhighlight>
 
</syntaxhighlight>
You should read through every translation in the .po file at least once.
+
You should read through every translation in the .po file at least once.
If you translate a string that has the phrase "#, fuzzy" in the comments
+
 
above it, remove the word fuzzy.   A fuzzy translation means that there is no translation. The
+
===== Common Flags =====
computer took some guess about what the translation might be, but as long as it is marked "#, fuzzy", this guess will simply be ignored and this string will stay untranslated. A string marked as "fuzzy" means it will not be translated in the program.
+
====== [{{URL:gettext-manual}}#Fuzzy-Entries Fuzzy Flag] ======
 +
If you see a string that has the phrase <tt>#, fuzzy</tt> in the flags comment above it, review the translation and confirm it by removing
 +
* the <tt>, fuzzy</tt> flag, but no other flags like <tt>, c-format</tt>,
 +
* the <tt>#| msgid</tt> lines, and in some cases
 +
* the <tt>#| msgctxt</tt> line.
 +
A fuzzy translation means that the translation will be ignored by the program.
 +
 
 +
There are at least 2 reasons for the fuzzy flag:
 +
# one of the <tt>msg*</tt> programs took some guess about what the translation might be from similar msgids,
 +
# in a previous version you had a valid translation, but a programmer changed (parts of) the msgid.
  
After you finish translating, you should not have any "#, fuzzy" strings left. Remember, a string marked as "fuzzy" means it will not be translated in the program.
+
After you finish translating, you should not have any "<tt>#, fuzzy</tt>" strings left. Remember, a string marked as "fuzzy" means it will not be translated in the program. You can filter for fuzzy messages by running <syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 +
cd ${SOURCEDIR}/po
 +
msgattrib --fuzzy ${YOUR_LANGUAGE}.po
 +
</syntaxhighlight>
  
For example:
+
;Example fuzzy message: <syntaxhighlight lang="po" highlight="2-3,5">
<syntaxhighlight lang="po">
 
 
#: messages-i18n.c:35
 
#: messages-i18n.c:35
 
#, fuzzy, c-format
 
#, fuzzy, c-format
msgid ""
+
#| msgid "There was an error opening the file %s."
"There was an error writing the file\n"
+
msgid "There was an error writing the file %s."
"    %s\n"
+
msgstr "Es gab einen Fehler beim Oeffnen der Datei %s."
"\n"
+
</syntaxhighlight> Here the msgid was changed from "opening" to "writing". You need to correct the translated string, remove the line(s) with the old msgid "<tt>#| msgid …</tt>" and the 'fuzzy' flag, because only then the translation will actually appear in the program.
"%s"
+
;Example fuzzy fixed: <syntaxhighlight lang="po" highlight="2,4">
msgstr ""
 
"Es gab einen Fehler beim Oeffnen der Datei. \n"
 
"    %s."
 
</syntaxhighlight>
 
You need to correct the translated string and remove the 'fuzzy' keyword, because only then the translation will actually appear in the program. Remember, a string marked as "fuzzy" means it will not be translated in the program.
 
For example:
 
<syntaxhighlight lang="po" highlight="2,9">
 
 
#: messages-i18n.c:35
 
#: messages-i18n.c:35
 
#, c-format
 
#, c-format
msgid ""
+
msgid "There was an error writing the file %s."
"There was an error writing the file\n"
+
msgstr "Es gab einen Fehler beim Schreiben der Datei %s."
"     %s\n"
+
</syntaxhighlight> Notice that <tt>#, c-format</tt> was ''not removed''.  That is correct, you should leave that.
"\n"
+
:;Tip: If all fuzzy strings were fixed (<syntaxhighlight lang="sh" inline>msgattrib --fuzzy $LL.po</syntaxhighlight> returns nothing), you can also bulk remove the previous messages with <syntaxhighlight lang="sh">msgattrib --clear-previous -o $LL.po $LL.po</syntaxhighlight>
"%s"
+
 
msgstr ""
+
====== Format Flags ======
"Es gab einen Fehler beim Schreiben der Datei. \n"
+
Because parts of GnuCash were written in different programming languages, there appear at least 2 different format flags:
"     %s."
+
;c-format: Format specifier: <code>%</code>
 +
:When you see the comment "c-format", it means that the format codes in the translatable string are referring to C formatting codes.  So, '%s' means text, '%d' means an integer, etc...
 +
;scheme-format: Format specifier: <code>~</code>
 +
;Todo: Which parts of [[#Special_characters_and_other_tips]] would better stay here?
 +
 
 +
===== Orphaned Records =====
 +
At the end of your file you might see records like <Syntaxhighlight  lang="po">
 +
#~ msgid "Enter an Online Direct Debit Note"
 +
#~ msgstr "Online-Lastschrift eingeben"
 +
 
 +
#~ msgid "Debited Account Number"
 +
#~ msgstr "Konto-Nr. des Zahlungspflichtigen"
 +
 
 
</syntaxhighlight>
 
</syntaxhighlight>
Notice that the comment "c-format" was ''not removed''. That is correct, you  
+
They have no reference line. This records are no longer in use and you can remove them.
should leave that.
 
 
 
When you see the comment "c-format", it means that the format codes in the
 
translatable string are referring to C formatting codes.  So, '%s' means text,
 
'%d' means an integer, etc...
 
  
 
==== Translate the strings ====
 
==== Translate the strings ====
 
+
Each message to translate is then given in turn in the PO file. For example, an untranslated entry might be: <syntaxhighlight lang="po">
Each message to translate is then given in turn in the PO file. For example, an untranslated entry might be:
 
<syntaxhighlight lang="po">
 
 
#: lib/error.c:88
 
#: lib/error.c:88
 
msgid "Unknown system error"
 
msgid "Unknown system error"
Line 529: Line 684:
 
</syntaxhighlight>
 
</syntaxhighlight>
  
The empty '''msgstr''' string has to be filled with the translation for the string shown after '''msgid'''. If you were a German speaker, say, the entry once translated might look like:
+
The empty '''msgstr''' string has to be filled with the translation for the string shown after '''msgid'''. If you were a German speaker, say, the entry once translated might look like: <syntaxhighlight lang="po">
<syntaxhighlight lang="po">
 
 
#: lib/error.c:88
 
#: lib/error.c:88
 
msgid "Unknown system error"
 
msgid "Unknown system error"
Line 536: Line 690:
 
</syntaxhighlight>
 
</syntaxhighlight>
  
You just produce a translation for all entries in the PO file, one after another, respecting the overall file format and the quoting needed for special characters, when needed. Observation and intuition may allow you to grasp what the format should be; the precise rules for PO files are given in the GNU gettext manual. The msgfmt program is helpful for pinpointing formatting errors.
+
You just produce a translation for all entries in the PO file, one after another, respecting the overall file format and the quoting needed for special characters, when needed. Observation and intuition may allow you to grasp what the format should be; the precise rules for PO files are given in the [{{URL:gettext-manual}} GNU gettext manual]. The msgfmt program is helpful for pinpointing formatting errors.
 +
 
 +
===== Contexts =====
 +
;Important: With Gnucash 3.7 the first 2 forms got replaced by [[#Message Context]]. The description of the old types is only kept for some time to help updating older catalogs.
 +
 
 +
At some places, GnuCash uses "disambiguation prefixes" in translatable strings. Here is an old explanation:
 +
{{ListURL}}/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2005-October/014236.html ; more explanation is also here: https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeI18nDeveloperTips.
 +
 
 +
There are at least 2 ''use cases'':
 +
* '''Abbreviations''', i.e. for columns and their headers: <SyntaxHighlight lang="po" highlight="2,5">
 +
msgid "Reconciled"
 +
msgstr "Abgeglichen"
 +
:
 +
msgid "Reconciled:R"
 +
msgstr "Reconciled:A"
 +
</SyntaxHighlight>
 +
* '''Sample text''' to determinate the size of the output cell. ''Instead of a translation'' the "worst case" of expected text in your language is required here.
 +
:For the following example the german tranlators copied ''the longest path'' of account names from their business account templates as shown in the accounts tab of Gnucash: <SyntaxHighlight lang="po" highlight="2">
 +
msgid "sample:Expenses:Automobile:Gasoline"
 +
msgstr "sample:Aufwendungen 2/4:Reparatur/Instandhaltung:4805 Reparatur u. Instandh. von Anlagen/Maschinen u. Betriebs- u. Geschäftsausst."
 +
</SyntaxHighlight>
 +
:;Important: ''Keep'' the part before the colon ''untranslated''.
 +
 
 +
Another form - without need to insert the prefix - was <SyntaxHighlight lang="po">
 +
#. Translators: This string has a context prefix; the translation
 +
#. must only contain the part after the | character.
 +
#: gnucash/gnome-utils/dialog-options.c:722
 +
#: gnucash/gnome-utils/gnc-tree-view-account.c:908
 +
msgid "Column letter for 'Placeholder'|P"
 +
msgstr "P"
 +
</SyntaxHighlight> and became <SyntaxHighlight lang="po">
 +
#: gnucash/gnome-utils/dialog-options.c:719
 +
#: gnucash/gnome-utils/gnc-tree-view-account.c:906
 +
msgctxt "Column header for 'Placeholder'"
 +
msgid "P"
 +
msgstr "P"
 +
</SyntaxHighlight>
 +
;Tip: A tool like kdiff3 can help you to recover your previous translation.
 +
====== Message Context ======
 +
In more recently written parts we use a message context: <SyntaxHighlight lang="po" highlight="2-3">
 +
#: libgnucash/app-utils/gnc-ui-util.c:903
 +
msgctxt "Reconciled flag 'not cleared'"
 +
msgid "n"
 +
msgstr ""
 +
</SyntaxHighlight>
  
 
===== Special characters and other tips =====
 
===== Special characters and other tips =====
 
''Depending on the context'' a few characters have a special meaning and need some special treatment:
 
''Depending on the context'' a few characters have a special meaning and need some special treatment:
;"_" (underline): In ''menu and dialog entries'' the following character will become the '''accelerator''' or '''hotkey''', which can be used together with a superkey [ctrl] or [alt] to jump to the entry. So it should be unique in its context. You should control it by [[#Running GnuCash]] with your file after [[#Compile & Install]].
+
;"#" (hash): In English it is often used as abbreviation for "Number". You should replace it by "No.", "Nr." or whatever is common in your language.
::''wrong:''
+
;"_" (underline): In ''menu and dialog entries'' the following character will become the '''accelerator''', '''mnemonic''' or '''hotkey''', which can be used together with a superkey <code>ctrl</code> or <code>alt</code> to jump to the entry. While in [[GTK2]] they have always been visible, in [[GTK3]] they appear only after holding the superkey. More specific under ''Linux'' you reach a main '''menu''' entry with <code>alt</code>+<code><key></code> and its submenus and other menu entries with <code><key></code>. In '''dialogs''' always use <code>alt</code>+<code><key></code>.
:::"do _this" # Hotkey: t
+
: The terminology is not unique here: while
:::"do _that" # Hotkey: t => unreachable
+
::[[#Desired|msgfmt]] has a <tt>--check-accelerator</tt> option and
::''right:''
+
::DocBook uses the <accel> tag for ''a letter used with a meta key'' and <shortcut> for ''a key combination'', but
::: "do th_is" # Hotkey: i
+
::GTK+ distinguishes the underline marked character of the label as ''mnemonic'' and the hotkeys like <code>F1</code> for <tt>Help</tt> or <code>ctrl</code>+<code>c</code> for <tt>Copy</tt> as ''accelerator''.
:::"do th_at" # Hotkey: a
+
: So the key should
::That is one of the reasons why you should run the program with your translation: to see duplicate accelerators.
+
:# exist on a keybord for your language.
::;Characters to avoid:  
+
:# be easy to remember for your users,
:::Already used on buttons like in English: '''C'''lose, '''H'''elp. Others depend on the context.
+
:# be ''unique in its context'' and you should control it by [[#Running GnuCash]] with your file after [[#Compile & Install]]. See also <tt>Access Keys</tt> in [{{URL:Gnome-HIG}}guidelines/keyboard.html Gnome's HIG about keyboard input].
:::Characters breaking the baseline like in latin script: '''j''','''p''','''q''','''y'''. At least in some fonts the underline becomes invisible - leaving the user clueless.
+
:::''wrong:''
:;In the headers of exported files: here it is used to link multiple words to one identifier together. Example:
+
::::"do _this" # Hotkey: t
<syntaxhighlight lang="po">
+
::::"do _that" # Hotkey: t => not directly reachable
#: ../src/import-export/csv-exp/csv-tree-export.c:155
+
::::"do th_is" # Hotkey: i => thin letter, underline becomes invisible
msgid "full_name"
+
:::''right:''
msgstr "Vollständige_Bezeichnung"
+
::::"do thi_s" # Hotkey: s
</syntaxhighlight>
+
::::"do th_at" # Hotkey: a
 +
:::That is one of the reasons why you should [[#Optional Compile & Install|run the program with your translation]]: to see duplicate accelerators.
 +
:::;Characters to avoid:  
 +
::::In dialogs some are already used on buttons like in English: <code>C</code>lose, <code>H</code>elp. Others depend on the context.
 +
::::Thin letters like lowercase '''i''' or '''l''', because the underline is to short.
 +
::::Characters breaking the baseline like in latin script: '''j''','''p''','''q''','''y'''. At least in some fonts the underline becomes invisible - leaving the user clueless.
 +
::It is not required to use the same key as in English, Example from de.po: <syntaxhighlight lang="po">
 +
#: gnucash/gnome-utils/gnc-main-window.c:273
 +
msgid "_File"
 +
msgstr "_Datei"
 +
</syntaxhighlight> Languages are just different.
 +
:;In Weblate: Compare <tt>https://hosted.weblate.org/browse/gnucash/gnucash/$LANGUAGE/?offset=1&q=_&sort_by=source&checksum=</tt>, but replace <q>$LANGUAGE</q> by your language code.
  
 
;"\" (backslash): It is the escape character in many programming languags. The following character has a special meaning like e.g.:
 
;"\" (backslash): It is the escape character in many programming languags. The following character has a special meaning like e.g.:
 
:;"\n" (New line): The most often used special character in our strings. If msgid contains "\n" keep the layout and add them to msgstr too - at the same places.
 
:;"\n" (New line): The most often used special character in our strings. If msgid contains "\n" keep the layout and add them to msgstr too - at the same places.
 +
:;"some \"quoted\" text": Because " terminates the messages, you must precede it by a backslash inside of the messages or use other quoting characters like:
 +
::*"some 'quoted' text"
 +
::*"some »quoted« text"
 +
::*"some „quoted” text"
 +
::You are free to use the conventions which are common or suggested in your language, but stay consistent. For that purpose you should add a translator comment about the convention at the beginning of the file for better cooperation.
 
:Use <tt>"\\"</tt> to print a backslash.
 
:Use <tt>"\\"</tt> to print a backslash.
;"%" (percent): In C based programming languages "%" marks the beginning of a '''format specifier''', e.g. "%d6" means insert the next variable here ''in decimal format with 6 digits''.
+
;"%" (percent): In C based programming languages "%" marks the beginning of a '''format specifier''', e.g. "%d6" means insert the next variable here ''in decimal format with 6 digits''. Such format specifiers should be copied into your translated message, at the appropriate spot for your language, see {{URL:Boost}}doc/libs/release/doc/html/date_time/date_time_io.html#date_time.format_flags Boost's list of format flags for date and time].
:* If no real format specifiers are in the string, [http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=GnuCash&component=Translations file a bugreport] and tell the developers the location of the string (the lines above the msgid), where they should insert a comment containing '''<tt>xgettext:no-c-format</tt>''' before the gettect call.
+
:;Non-ASCII digits: As a special feature for Farsi (Persian) and maybe Arabic, translators can insert an ‘I’ flag into numeric format directives. For example, the translation of "%d" can be "%Id". The effect of this flag, on systems with GNU libc, is that in the output, the ASCII digits are replaced with the ‘outdigits’ defined in the LC_CTYPE locale category. On other systems, the gettext function removes this flag, so that it has no effect.
::To continue with your work just remove the <tt>c-format</tt> flag from the <tt>#,</tt> comment line above. If no other flags are in the line, simply remove the line.
+
:;Note: If a string is marked with c-format and has a % mark that does '''not''' start a format specifier, [{{BugURL}}/enter_bug.cgi?product=GnuCash&component=Translations file a bugreport] and tell the developers the location of the string (the lines above the msgid). The developers should fix this in the code. One way to do so is to insert a comment containing '''<tt>xgettext:no-c-format</tt>''' before the gettext call.
 +
::In order to continue without having to wait for the developers' fix to propagate you can remove the <tt>c-format</tt> flag from the <tt>#,</tt> comment line above. If no other flags are in the line, simply remove the line.
 
:* To output "%" if a string contains format specifiers, use "%%" in your string.
 
:* To output "%" if a string contains format specifiers, use "%%" in your string.
 
:;Reordering parameters: Assume a string <tt>"In %d cases the result will be %d."</tt>, but in your language you would prefer to write <tt>"%d will be the result in %d cases."</tt> Now you would get the wrong numbers.
 
:;Reordering parameters: Assume a string <tt>"In %d cases the result will be %d."</tt>, but in your language you would prefer to write <tt>"%d will be the result in %d cases."</tt> Now you would get the wrong numbers.
 
::;Solution: Insert the ordinal number of the parameter, followed by "$" in the format specifier: <tt>"%2$d will be the result in %1$d cases."</tt>.
 
::;Solution: Insert the ordinal number of the parameter, followed by "$" in the format specifier: <tt>"%2$d will be the result in %1$d cases."</tt>.
 +
;"~" (tilde): like "%", but for <tt>scheme-format</tt>. The basic scheme-format uses ~a or ~s to format subsequent variables within code and should be copied in the translated message, in the same order. Guile's <tt>(ice-9 format)</tt><ref>{{URL:guile-manual}}Formatted-Output.html</ref> does reordering with the ~@* and ~#* arguments, but it's a bit tricky to use: <syntaxhighlight lang="scheme">
 +
(format #t "~@*1~a's ~@* from ~@*2~a to ~a" "Balance Sheet" "Yoyodyne Pty" "1 Oct 2018" "30 Sept 2019")
 +
</syntaxhighlight> would print <syntaxhighlight lang="console">
 +
Yoyodyne Pty's Balance Sheet from 1 Oct 2018 to 30 Sept 2019
 +
</syntaxhighlight>
 +
:;Note: ~a will insert a contents using "human readable" <tt>(display var)</tt> whereas ~s will insert contents using <tt>(write var)</tt>. This is an important difference which means ~a and ~s cannot be interchanged.<ref>{{URL:guile-manual}}Scheme-Write.html</ref>
 +
;"{''num'',''optional other specifiers''}": this is a format specifier for C++ code. You cat either copy it verbatim somewhere in your translated message or you may [{{URL:Boost}}doc/libs/release/doc/html/date_time/date_time_io.html#date_time.format_flagsdoc/libs/release/libs/locale/doc/html/localized_text_formatting.html adapt it to your language].
 +
;"$" (Dollar): Since 2023 there is another format specifier: <tt>${parameter-name}</tt>.
 +
:;Example: <syntaxhighlight lang="scheme">
 +
(gnc:format "${start} to ${end}" 'start "1 Oct 2018" 'end "30 Sept 2019")
 +
</syntaxhighlight> will print <syntaxhighlight lang="console">
 +
1 Oct 2018 to 30 Sept 2019
 +
</syntaxhighlight> <ref>[{{URL:Bugs}}show_bug.cgi?id=797725 Bug 797725 - Untranslatable string "For Period Covering ~a to ~a"]</ref>
 +
;"&" (ampersand): is the starting  character of [{{URL:wp}}Character_encodings_in_HTML HTML encoding], which is used in some reports. E.g. <syntaxhighlight lang="html">&nbsp;</syntaxhighlight> means NonBreakableSpace.
 +
;"<" (less): is the starting  charcter of tags in several markup languages.  E.g. <syntaxhighlight lang="html"><b>Text</b></syntaxhighlight> results in bold '''Text'''.
 +
;See also: [[GUI Guidelines]] is the related programmers view.
 +
 +
===== Almost Done =====
 +
If you are almost done it becomes harder to find the last untranslated messages. Then you can use <syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 +
msgattrib --untranslated ${LL}.po
 +
</syntaxhighlight> and then search your file for the content of the msgid.
  
 
==== Check syntax and statistics of your .po file ====
 
==== Check syntax and statistics of your .po file ====
===== Required =====
+
;Required: <syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
msgfmt -c --statistics LL.po
+
msgfmt -c --statistics ${LL}.po
 +
</syntaxhighlight>
 
If that program reports one or more ''fatal errors'' for your language, you should review the criticized lines of your file.
 
If that program reports one or more ''fatal errors'' for your language, you should review the criticized lines of your file.
 
+
:;Tip: A successful call will create a file <tt>messages.mo</tt>. If you are not using a build environment, you can move that file to
===== Desired =====
+
::;Linux: <tt>[[Building On Linux#Locations to which GnuCash may be installed|${PREFIX}]]/share/locale/${LL}/LC_MESSAGES/gnucash.mo</tt>
In a second run you might wish to see, where you forgot to add an [[#Special characters and other tips|accelerator]]:
+
:: and restart gnucash to test the program with your translation.
msgfmt -c --check-accelerators="_" --statistics LL.po
+
;Desired: In a second run you might wish to see, where you forgot to add an [[#Special characters and other tips|accelerator]]: <syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
The users will love you if you fix this, too.
+
msgfmt -c --check-accelerators="_" --statistics ${LL}.po
 +
</syntaxhighlight>
 +
The users will love you if you fix them, too.
  
 
==== Current status ====
 
==== Current status ====
See [[Translation Status]] for the current status of the project with respect to translation contributions.
 
 
 
To see some over all statistics how many strings are translated, you can run
 
To see some over all statistics how many strings are translated, you can run
 
  for i in *.po; do echo -n "$i:"; msgfmt -c --statistics $i;done
 
  for i in *.po; do echo -n "$i:"; msgfmt -c --statistics $i;done
Line 588: Line 825:
 
As you might have noticed, the po file for GnuCash is rather big by containing more than 4000 strings. It is somewhat helpful to look into different priorities for the different strings there. However, unfortunately the po file format doesn't enable any easy way for the GnuCash project to make the import strings differently from the less important ones. However, for a few files the developer team can give you some guidelines for the general priorities.
 
As you might have noticed, the po file for GnuCash is rather big by containing more than 4000 strings. It is somewhat helpful to look into different priorities for the different strings there. However, unfortunately the po file format doesn't enable any easy way for the GnuCash project to make the import strings differently from the less important ones. However, for a few files the developer team can give you some guidelines for the general priorities.
  
The ''source code location'' of a string gives you some hint about its priority. In particular, the following file suffixes or file locations imply a certain priority:
+
The ''source code location'' aka [[#Record Format|ref[erence]]] of a string gives you some hint about its priority. In particular, the following file suffixes or file locations imply a certain priority:
* '''High Priority:''' Strings from all '''*.glade.h''' files will appear in the GnuCash user interface (UI) somewhere for the user. This may imply a somewhat higher priority to those strings - however, some UI elements are rarely used, so the actual location of the .glade file has an influence as well, but there isn't an easy rule for that anymore.
+
* '''High Priority:''' Strings from all '''*.glade''' files will be presented by the GnuCash user interface (UI) somewhere for the user. This may imply a somewhat higher priority to those strings - however, some UI elements are rarely used, so the actual location of the .glade file has an influence as well, but there isn't an easy rule for that anymore.
:;Tip: If you wish to see the string from a *.glade.h file in it's context, but don't know, where it is hidden in gnucash, you can open the file <tt>gtkbuilder/*.glade</tt> with Gnomes interface builder [https://glade.gnome.org/ Glade].  
+
:;Tip: If you wish to see the string from a *.glade file in it's context, but don't know, where it is hidden in gnucash, if
* '''Low Priority:''' Strings from all '''*.schemas.h''' files will '''not''' appear in the gnucash UI. Instead, they are shown only inside the ''gconf-editor'' program when the user wants to set particular gconf keys of GnuCash. You can safely consider the .schemas.h strings with lower priority than the others.
+
::* the gnucash source files and
 +
::* the Gnome's interface builder [https://glade.gnome.org/ Glade]
 +
::are installed on your system, you can preview them for instance with <syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 +
LANG=C glade-previewer -f ${SOURCEDIR}/gnucash/gtkbuilder/${FILENAME}
 +
</syntaxhighlight><ref>Without <tt>LANG=C</tt> you would see localized standard buttons, but for now you want to see everything in US English.</ref>
 +
* '''Low Priority:''' Strings from all '''*.schemas.h''' files will '''not''' appear in the gnucash UI. Instead, they are shown only inside the  
 +
:* Linux: ''dconf-editor'',
 +
:* {{Mac}}: ''defaults'' or
 +
:* Windows: ''regedit'' program when the user wants to set particular [[Glossary#G|GSettings]] keys of GnuCash. You can safely consider the .schemas.h strings with lower priority than the others.
 +
**  '''Register2 feature''' is a stalled developement. The strings are only visible, if you [[#configure]]<tt> --enable-register2</tt>. Some, but not all strings are marked with a "Register2 feature" comment.
  
 
Unfortunately, there is no such simple rule for strings from *.c files or the single large intl-scm/guile-string.c file. The strings from there may be of higher or lower priority, but this isn't easily visible. We can only recommend to start GnuCash on your own with your updated translation, and then check for strings which you see but are not yet translated. Those are for sure of high priority.
 
Unfortunately, there is no such simple rule for strings from *.c files or the single large intl-scm/guile-string.c file. The strings from there may be of higher or lower priority, but this isn't easily visible. We can only recommend to start GnuCash on your own with your updated translation, and then check for strings which you see but are not yet translated. Those are for sure of high priority.
Line 598: Line 844:
 
* Everything from the file ''src/bin/gnucash-bin.c'' is of '''low priority''' because those are the command line options when running gnucash with different options from the command line. This is a use case that is performed only by highly experienced users which are accustomed to using the English-language command line commands. Therefore, translations here are of lower priority.
 
* Everything from the file ''src/bin/gnucash-bin.c'' is of '''low priority''' because those are the command line options when running gnucash with different options from the command line. This is a use case that is performed only by highly experienced users which are accustomed to using the English-language command line commands. Therefore, translations here are of lower priority.
 
* Everything from the folder ''src/tax'' or from the intl-scm/guile-string.c file with a comment indicating some file in ''src/reports/locale-specific'' is related to tax preparation in the U.S. or in Germany. Hence, those strings are uninteresting for anyone living in different countries, and you can safely consider those with very '''low priority'''.
 
* Everything from the folder ''src/tax'' or from the intl-scm/guile-string.c file with a comment indicating some file in ''src/reports/locale-specific'' is related to tax preparation in the U.S. or in Germany. Hence, those strings are uninteresting for anyone living in different countries, and you can safely consider those with very '''low priority'''.
 
==== Disambiguation Prefix ====
 
At some places, GnuCash uses "disambiguation prefixes" in translatable strings. Here is an old explanation:
 
https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2005-October/014236.html ; more explanation is also here: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeI18nDeveloperTips .
 
 
@Developers: In the normal source code of a gtk-based program, this feature is available by simply using the [http://www.gtk.org/api/2.6/glib/glib-I18N.html#Q-:CAPS Q_( )] macro instead of the _( ) macro.
 
 
This would be used e.g. as follows
 
/* Translators: This string has a disambiguation prefix */
 
func(Q_("Noun|Transfer"));
 
where the string that shows up in the GUI is simply "Transfer", but the translators need the prefix to be able to choose the correct translation of the noun vs. the verb.
 
 
In the latest gettext versions, this disambiguation is solved in yet another way by introducing an additional "context string" in addition to the translatable string, see below. As this is still a relatively new feature, we don't use this in GnuCash yet.
 
 
===== Context by Particular Gettext =====
 
 
A more recent method is "particular gettext" pgettext().
 
 
Example:
 
pgettext("account status: not cleared", "n")
 
would result in a msgid like:
 
#: src/app-utils/gnc-ui-util.c:656
 
msgctxt "account status: not cleared"
 
msgid "n"
 
msgstr ""
 
 
See [http://www.gnu.org/software/hello/manual/gettext/Contexts.html Gettext Manual: Contexts] for details.
 
  
 
=== Testing and submitting your translations ===
 
=== Testing and submitting your translations ===
 
 
You must check that your new translations are programatically correct (ie:  
 
You must check that your new translations are programatically correct (ie:  
that there are no unclosed quotes, etc). To do this, use the msgfmt program
+
that there are no unclosed quotes, etc). To do this, use the msgfmt program <syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 
+
msgfmt -c --statistics $LL.po
msgfmt -c --statistics LL.po
+
</syntaxhighlight>
 
 
 
Above call will report most important errors in your .po file and ''must not fail'', while the call below
 
Above call will report most important errors in your .po file and ''must not fail'', while the call below
 
  msgfmt -c --check-accelerators="_" --statistics LL.po
 
  msgfmt -c --check-accelerators="_" --statistics LL.po
whill additionally check if you missed some keyboard accellerators aka hotkeys. But this call ''formally will always fail'' as there is at least 1 string, where the underline is no accelerator marker: <code>msgid "translator_credits"</code> from [[#Adjust the header and special strings]]. So just eleminate the other warnings and ignore that about "translator_credits".
+
whill additionally check if you missed some keyboard accellerators aka hotkeys.
  
 
;Note for developers: Another python based tool is '''i18nspector''' - checking tool for gettext POT, PO and MO files. It is stricter and shows also warnings about expected entries which our .pot file is currently missing. That can be discussed e.g. in [[#Background]].
 
;Note for developers: Another python based tool is '''i18nspector''' - checking tool for gettext POT, PO and MO files. It is stricter and shows also warnings about expected entries which our .pot file is currently missing. That can be discussed e.g. in [[#Background]].
  
 
If you want to see your translations within a running version of gnucash,
 
If you want to see your translations within a running version of gnucash,
simply place your .po file in the po/ directory of your local gnucash repository (which
+
simply place your .po file in the po/ directory of your local gnucash source repository (which
you have previously installed) and from within the po/ directory type (you
+
you have previously installed) and a regenerate your message catalogs with:
may need to be root to do this):
+
<Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 
+
cd ${BUILDIDR} # adjust to navigate to your build directory
make install
+
make po-gmo
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
  
 
Now you can run gnucash with your new translations:
 
Now you can run gnucash with your new translations:
  
LANG=XXXX /opt/gnucash-git/bin/gnucash
+
<Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 +
cd ${BUILDIDR} # adjust to navigate to your build directory
 +
LANG=XXXX ./bin/gnucash
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
  
To review the schema strings you can use
+
To review the schema strings you can use 'dconf-editor'
:;since 2.6: dconf-editor
 
:;until 2.4: gconf-editor.
 
  
 +
==== Alternative Way with Poedit ====
 +
If you use Poedit while working on .po file, you would notice that it saves file in .mo format, the very format that GnuCash uses itself. So one would just need to copy this LL.mo file into appropriate subdirectory of your build directory:
  
==== Alternative Way with Poedit ====
+
<Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 +
cp ${LL}.mo ${BUILDDIR}/share/locale/${LL}/LC_MESSAGES/gnucash.mo # replace ${BUILDDIR} with the actual path to your build directory
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
  
If you use Poedit while working on .po file, you would notice that it saves file in .mo format, the very format that GnuCash uses itself. So one would just need to copy this LL.mo file into appropriate subdirectory under /opt/gnucash-git:
+
The only thing that needs to be changed here is &lt;LL&gt; which stands for your language code (ka Georgian, de German etc). The rest is as in above method:
  cp LL.mo /opt/gnucash-git/share/locale/LL/LC_MESSAGES/gnucash.mo
 
  
The only thing that needs to be changed here is LL which stands for your country code (ka Georgian, de German etc). The rest is as in above method:
+
<Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
LANG=XXXX /opt/gnucash-git/bin/gnucash
+
cd ${BUILDDIR}  # adjust to navigate to your build directory
 +
LANG=$XXXX ./bin/gnucash
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
  
 
=== Submitting ===
 
=== Submitting ===
Only if
+
just push your commit ([[Git#Pull Requests]]) or upload the [[Git#Patches]] of the files.
* you want to send your file to the Translation Project or
+
There should be one commit/patch containing the noise as described in [[#Update an existing .po file]] and a second one containing your actual work.
* it did not exist before and you want to send it via mailing list, create a gzipped version of it:
 
<SyntaxHighlight lang="sh">gzip XXXX.po</SyntaxHighlight>
 
:Do the same with your [[#The glossary file]].
 
 
 
In all other cases just push your commit ([[Git#Pull Requests]]) or upload the [[Git#Patches]] of the files.
 
  
 
Then follow [[#How to submit changes directly to GnuCash]].
 
Then follow [[#How to submit changes directly to GnuCash]].
 
+
See also {{ListURL}}/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2009-January/024700.html [FIXME: obsolete?]
Alternatively, you could submit the finished translation via the GNU Translation Project. See the instructions on http://translationproject.org/ and the first section of this document about how to do that.
 
 
 
See [[Translation Status]] for the current status of the project with respect to translation contributions.
 
 
 
See also http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2009-January/024700.html [FIXME: obsolete?]
 
  
 
==== Committers ====
 
==== Committers ====
* Check in which branch the translation should be submitted: [[Translation_Status]]
 
 
* Did you get [[#The glossary file]], too?
 
* Did you get [[#The glossary file]], too?
* As long as [https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=759844 Bug 759844 - Older gettext versions ignore translatable labels containing "context=" in glade files] is not fixed, check the new .po  file for the existence of 4x2 <code>msgctxt</code> entries from <tt>gnc-frequency.glade</tt>.
 
 
* Ideally [[#Updating an existing .po file]]
 
* Ideally [[#Updating an existing .po file]]
* [[#Check_syntax_and_statistics_of_your_.po_file]]!
+
* Checks:
: Notify the statistics for the commit message.
+
**[[#Check_syntax_and_statistics_of_your_.po_file]]!
 +
*:Notify the statistics for the commit message.
 +
** The Python tool <tt>i18nspector</tt> finds many additional errors, particular bad header lines. But its language list is incomplete as it knows not many 3-letter-languages.
 +
**Some common mistakes:
 +
::;msgid "translator-credits": should contain at least the "Last-Translator:" from the header.
 +
::;msgid "gnucash-icon": do not translate, we have only one.
 +
 
 
* If the language is ''new''
 
* If the language is ''new''
** [[#Adjust_configure.ac]] already done?
+
** [[#Adjust po/CMakeLists.txt]] already done?
** and not handled by the [[#GNU Translation Project]], they need a '''note about the external handling'''. Else it can happen e.g. as of 2015-03  http://translationproject.org/team/ar.html shows:
+
* On committing add the name and email address of the last translator from the file as author, e.g. <syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
gnucash 2.6.5 0 / 4628
+
  git commit --author="Lieutenant Worf <lt.worf@starfleet.org>" --message="L10N:tlh[: optional status or other details]
::If you there click on 2.5.6 you will get a fresh gnucash-2.6.5.pot, while we have already an ar.po with 2031 translated and 4 fuzzy messages. By contrast on the as external marked http://translationproject.org/team/de.html, you see:
+
 
gnucash 2.6.5 unknown external
+
4677 translated messages." # << The msgfmt statistics
::and will not get a new pot file.
 
::But we can bundle this notes with the release announcement, if you add the language to [[Release Process#TP Status changes]].
 
* On committing add the name and email address of the last translator from the file as author, e.g.
 
<syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 
  git commit --author="Lieutenant Worf <lt.worf@gmail.com>" --message="Update of tlh.po
 
4677 translated messages." # << The msgfmt statistics
 
 
</syntaxhighlight>
 
</syntaxhighlight>
 
* If you check in a new language, remove a language or see the status of the language changes from partial to (almost) complete, update the numbers in ''<sect2 id="oview-featuresintl2">'' in file '''guide/C/ch_oview.xml''' of ''gnucash-docs''.
 
* If you check in a new language, remove a language or see the status of the language changes from partial to (almost) complete, update the numbers in ''<sect2 id="oview-featuresintl2">'' in file '''guide/C/ch_oview.xml''' of ''gnucash-docs''.
  
 
=== Problems===
 
=== Problems===
 
==== intl/Makefile is already registered ====
 
When you see this error message during autogen.sh run:
 
 
configure.ac:1219: error: `intl/Makefile' is already registered with
 
AC_CONFIG_FILES.
 
autoconf/status.m4:844: AC_CONFIG_FILES is expanded from...
 
configure.ac:1219: the top level
 
autom4te: /usr/bin/m4 failed with exit status: 1
 
autoheader: /usr/bin/autom4te failed with exit status: 1
 
**Error**: autoheader failed.
 
 
Then you need to revert the configure.ac script to the original form that is in git:
 
git checkout configure.ac
 
 
 
==== Gtk-CRITICAL messages ====
 
==== Gtk-CRITICAL messages ====
 
'''Note:''' Fixing this problem is quite difficult. We keep the explanation here in case some developers need it in the future, but if you have no idea what we are talking about in the next sentences, you should rather ignore these Gtk-CRITICAL messages and our explanation here!
 
'''Note:''' Fixing this problem is quite difficult. We keep the explanation here in case some developers need it in the future, but if you have no idea what we are talking about in the next sentences, you should rather ignore these Gtk-CRITICAL messages and our explanation here!
Line 728: Line 925:
 
To do this, you need to run gnucash under gdb:
 
To do this, you need to run gnucash under gdb:
  
LANG=XXXX /opt/gnucash-git/bin/gnucash-env gdb /usr/bin/guile
+
<Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 +
cd ${BUILDIDR} # adjust to navigate to your build directory
 +
LANG=§XXXX gdb ./bin/gnucash
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
  
Then, from within gdb, issue:
+
Then, from within gdb, issue <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
run -e main -s /opt/gnucash-git/libexec/gnucash/overrides/gnucash --g-fatal-warnings
+
run --g-fatal-warnings
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
  
 
Eventually, gnucash should crash (because of the --g-fatal-warnings  
 
Eventually, gnucash should crash (because of the --g-fatal-warnings  
directive), when it does, issue from within gdb:
+
directive), when it does, issue from within gdb <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 +
backtrace
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
  
backtrace
+
You should see some output that looks like <Syntaxhighlight lang="console">
 
+
#0  0xffffe002 in ?? ()
You should see some output that looks like this:
+
#1  0x42028a73 in abort () from /lib/tls/libc.so.6
 
+
#2  0x4019d3d8 in g_logv () from /usr/lib/libglib-1.2.so.0
#0  0xffffe002 in ?? ()
+
#3  0x4019d414 in g_log () from /usr/lib/libglib-1.2.so.0
#1  0x42028a73 in abort () from /lib/tls/libc.so.6
+
#4  0x40500fdd in gtk_type_check_object_cast () from  
#2  0x4019d3d8 in g_logv () from /usr/lib/libglib-1.2.so.0
+
/usr/lib/libgtk-1.2.so.0
#3  0x4019d414 in g_log () from /usr/lib/libglib-1.2.so.0
+
#5  0x407292e5 in gnc_mdi_tweak_menus (mc=0x825adb0) at gnc-mdi-utils.c:574
#4  0x40500fdd in gtk_type_check_object_cast () from  
+
#6  0x40729d13 in gnc_mdi_child_changed_cb (mdi=0x8266fd8, prev_child=0x0,
/usr/lib/libgtk-1.2.so.0
+
    data=0x8265fd8) at gnc-mdi-utils.c:861
#5  0x407292e5 in gnc_mdi_tweak_menus (mc=0x825adb0) at gnc-mdi-utils.c:574
+
</Syntaxhighlight>
#6  0x40729d13 in gnc_mdi_child_changed_cb (mdi=0x8266fd8, prev_child=0x0,
 
      data=0x8265fd8) at gnc-mdi-utils.c:861
 
  
 
Notice position #5 which has "gnc_mdi_tweak_menus at  
 
Notice position #5 which has "gnc_mdi_tweak_menus at  
 
gnc-mdi-utils.c:574"?  Open that source file and find line 574:
 
gnc-mdi-utils.c:574"?  Open that source file and find line 574:
 
+
<Syntaxhighlight lang="c" line start=573>
573:  widget = gnc_mdi_child_find_menu_item(mc, "_View/_Toolbar");
+
  widget = gnc_mdi_child_find_menu_item(mc, "_View/_Toolbar");
574:  gtk_signal_handler_block_by_data(GTK_OBJECT(widget), info);
+
  gtk_signal_handler_block_by_data(GTK_OBJECT(widget), info);
 +
</Syntaxhighlight>
  
 
So, the problem is with the translation of "_View/_Toolbar".  The "/" is a  
 
So, the problem is with the translation of "_View/_Toolbar".  The "/" is a  
 
menu seperator, so you now know that the problem is with either the  
 
menu seperator, so you now know that the problem is with either the  
translation of "_View" or "_Toolbar". By switching to an English gnucash (LANG=C)  
+
translation of "_View" or "_Toolbar". By switching to an English gnucash (LANG=C)  
 
and looking through your .po file, you should be able to find out the problem.
 
and looking through your .po file, you should be able to find out the problem.
 
Change the offending translation to whatever you see in the gnucash app.
 
Change the offending translation to whatever you see in the gnucash app.
Line 764: Line 966:
  
 
==== Watch File accesses ====
 
==== Watch File accesses ====
To follow gnucash as it access files,
+
To follow gnucash as it access files <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
strace /opt/gnucash-git/bin/gnucash
+
strace /opt/gnucash-git/bin/gnucash
 
+
</Syntaxhighlight>
=== Thank You ===
 
Thanks so very much to all the translators for their hard effort and
 
excellent work.
 
 
 
== How to translate the Windows Installer==
 
 
 
Follow the instructions in the [https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2009-January/024535.html this thread].
 
 
 
== Check doc/README-* ==
 
 
 
The following filepatterns in doc/ are of interest:
 
* README-<language>
 
* README-<LL>.win32-bin.txt
 
 
 
This plain text files are often forgotten and become easily outdated. But if gnucash-doc is not installed or yelp not working, they are the only documentation, which the user can find in your language on her computer.
 
 
 
'''Q:''' Shouldn't it be possible by some make-magic, to adjust current-, last-stable-, next-stable- release and release-date - e.g. like target gnucash.1 in makefile? --[[User:Fell|Fell]] 20:21, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
 
 
 
== Translating the GnuCash Guide and Help==
 
 
 
This section describes the actions needed to translate the manuals. There are currently 2 parts:
 
* ''Tutorial and Concept Guide'': This is an introduction in the basic principles of double entry accounting and their application in GnuCash. This text is really useful for new users.
 
* '''Help''': This is the context sensitive help system.
 
 
 
If you are interested in translating these documents, please decide whether you want ''only'' to translate the existing text or whether you want also to improve and cross-check the text with the actual status in the program in your language. It is less effort only to translate the text, but you also run into the risk of doing unnecessary work if you translate explanations which are no longer correct. It might be more effort to create a new text in your language, using the English text only as an inspiration, but it will surely lead to more useable and more helpful documentation. We, the programmers, encourage you to do the latter and create a new text in your language. As you are the one doing the work, the decision is up to you.
 
 
 
Both documents consist of
 
* text files in an XML format called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook DocBook], where the complete document is split into a collection of xml files by chapter, and
 
* pictures: Those are png files in the subdirectory figures/. The xml files will contain links to the png files where they should appear in the text.
 
At the beginning you might wish to concentrate on the text. If desired, you could link the english pictures from <tt>C/figures</tt>.
 
 
 
You can find an introduction to DocBook in [http://docbook.org/tdg51/en/html/ch02.html Creating DocBook Documents].
 
 
 
Please use a ''unified terminology'': The translator of the program messages should have created [[#The glossary file]] for the translations of the key wordings in the program. Please make sure to use the same terms in the documents, too.
 
 
 
You can check the [http://code.gnucash.org/docs/ nightly builds] - in particular after your updates were committed.
 
 
 
=== Prerequisites ===
 
 
 
==== Linux ====
 
 
 
In addition to the software for running autogen.sh, the following additional software is needed for the development on Linux. From the [https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash-docs/blob/master/README gnucash-docs/README] file as of 2016-01-23:
 
 
 
:* libxml2
 
:* libxslt [Debian packed the required xsltproc in a separate package,
 
::          which depends on libxslt]
 
:* docbook-xsl
 
:* rarian or
 
:: scrollkeeper >=0.3.4 (its ancestor)
 
:* yelp (for viewing)
 
 
 
:Optional:
 
::* gnome-doc-utils (contains <tt>xml2po</tt> for the use of po editors like in the it translation)
 
 
 
:Additional Requirements for Generating PDF:
 
 
 
:* Apache fop  >= 0.95
 
 
 
:For the Japanese PDF, Japanese fonts are included. If you want to use
 
:other Japanese fonts you can use the --with-japanese-fonts-dir,
 
:--with-japanese-mincho-ttf, and --with-japanese-gothic-ttf configure
 
:options to select them. fop's TTFReader can't, as of version 1.1
 
:anyway, handle OpenType fonts.
 
 
 
:Additional Requirements for Generating Mobipocket:
 
 
 
:* Calibre (http://www.calibre-ebook.com/)
 
 
 
 
 
'''Note for wiki editors:''' Keep above section in sync with [https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash-docs/blob/master/README gnucash-docs/README]
 
 
 
==== Other Operating Systems ====
 
 
 
Wm says the section below is being edited and not yet complete, see the thread "Help with help" in gnucash-devel for more info
 
----
 
  
===== MacOSX =====
+
== Check Files in Repo gnucash's doc Directory ==
 +
;Note: The content of this directory got some cleanup by <s>[{{BugURL}}/show_bug.cgi?id=797111 bug 797111]</s>.
  
At present we do not know of a suitable DocBook file toolset for ''MacOSX'' though a *nix on Mac approach may / should work. We encourage solutions so if someone could document this we would be grateful [Wm: aside is this redundant? Don't most modern Macs include *nix so instructions similar to those I have provided for Win might apply?]
+
In theory one could create localized man pages (<command>.<man-section>[.in]). But their content is almost the same as <tt><command> --help</tt>, which are translated for <tt>gnucash</tt> and <tt>gnucash-cli</tt>.
 +
;Task: We should use gettext also in the perl modules.
  
===== Windows =====
+
* If you add files add them to <tt>set(doc_DATA ...)</tt> in [{{URL:GH}}Gnucash/gnucash/blob/stable/doc/CMakeLists.txt CMakeLists.txt].
  
One way of being able to edit and produce DocBook files on ''Windows'' is to use the *nix instructions under cygwin.  Instructions for obtaining a suitable toolset follow
+
== Translating the GnuCash Manual and Guide==
 
+
Moved to [[Documentation Translation]].
*Get cygwin by going to http://www.cygwin.com and pressing the link for the setup-*.exe file suited to your system
 
*save it, virus scan it, etc. as you see fit then run it
 
*type "libxslt" into the search box
 
*expand Libs and press Skip so that it shows a version for all 3 GNOME XSLT Library options, you want the most recent which it will offer by default, cygwin will work out the gndependencies
 
*you may follow similar steps to obtain git, i.e. type "git" into the search box, expand and tick the obvious candidates
 
*Note: because these are *nix type text based utilities you are downloading hundreds of kiloBytes not megaBytes; relax, this isn't Windows Update, a few extra progs won't kill your system, promise
 
*click next at the bottom rhs and let cygwin do its stuff; this may take some time depending on connection speeds at both ends
 
*Aside: if you get a msg about "Package: Unknown package / inetutils.sh exit code 1" you may ignore it, after reading the full blurb, of course, my advice is not to try and track it down unless you have a lot of spare time on your hands
 
*When it is done fire up cygwin and do stuff as per the *nix instructions
 
 
 
Further details:
 
 
 
*don't look for
 
:*yelp (the viewer)
 
*on cygwin: it isn't there; it is an old prog (last updated in 2007, I think
 
:: wrong, see http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/yelp/. --[[User:Fell|Fell]] 17:21, 26 October 2013 (EDT)
 
:) and should probably not be regarded as current though it may be useful if you have it on another OS
 
: [Wm:
 
::* I wonder how many current *nix users have it?
 
::: AFAIK it is still part of the GNOME desktop: [https://www.google.de/search?q=yelp+gnome google search for yelp+gnome] --[[User:Fell|Fell]] 17:21, 26 October 2013 (EDT)
 
: Should ref to yelp be made less prominent?
 
:: It is the only way I know to get some context sensitive help from inside GnuCash. --[[User:Fell|Fell]] 17:21, 26 October 2013 (EDT)
 
: ]
 
 
 
----
 
Wm says the section above is being edited and not yet complete, see the thread "Help with help" in gnucash-devel for more info
 
 
 
===== Java (all OS) =====
 
 
 
[[Eclipse]] has
 
* several Git plugins,
 
* a C Development Tool with autotools support,
 
* a feature rich, builtin XML editor and a few plugins like XML WYSIWYG editors
 
or in other words, all what is needed here, available.
 
 
 
=== The Procedure ===
 
 
 
First, you have to download the most recent version of the gnucash-docs package. This is done as follows:
 
 
 
# Checkout the documentation in a directory ''gnucash-docs'':
 
#: <code>git clone <nowiki>https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash-docs</nowiki> -b maint gnucash-docs</code>
 
# Create your working branch. If you plan to use pull requests, you should use unique names like ''guide-LL-chapter-x-part-n'' instead of working-branch.
 
#: <code>git checkout -b working-branch</code>
 
# Create a new directory (if it doesn't already exist) in guide/<locale> where <locale> is of the form <language>[_<region>] e.g. es, en_GB, or pt_PT. See [[#Naming Conventions]].
 
#:See [[Locale_Settings#IETF_language_tags]] for details.
 
#:If your translation is the first for your language do not add a region code. So also other regions benefit from your translation.
 
#:And copy the files from guide/C into this directory:
 
#: <code>cp -r guide/C guide/LL</code>
 
# Add the directory you created to [gnucash-docs/]'''configure.ac''' (as a new line ''guide/<language>[_<region>]/Makefile'' under AC_OUTPUT) and [gnucash-docs/]guide/Makefile.am (at the end of SUBDIRS).
 
# Notify git about the new directory and files. "*" is quoted by "\".
 
#: <code>git add guide/LL/\*.\*</code>
 
# Now the real work:
 
## Edit '''all the xml files''' (see [[#DocBook xml editors]] below for suitable editor programs) and translate them into your language.
 
##: In the event the english documents get updated, it might be useful to have a comment in the header of each chapter in  the form:
 
##: <pre><!-- Translation based on maint/master as of 2014-01-01 10:00 UTC --></pre>
 
##: Use the same terminoloy as in [[#The_glossary_file]]. If you did not [[#Get_the_source_from_Git]], you can simply download your languages .po file from the [https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/tree/maint/po/glossary glossary directory at GitHub].
 
## Adjust  '''<tt>gnucash-{guide|help}-<lang>.omf</tt>'''. This file follows [http://www.ibiblio.org/osrt/omf/ Open Metadata Framework] (OMF), a subset of the [http://dublincore.org/  Dublin Core] description for metadata. See [http://scrollkeeper.sourceforge.net/documentation/writing_scrollkeeper_omf_files/index.html Writing ScrollKeeper OMF Files] for details like mandatory standard elements. Without this file your document will not show up in ''yelp''s index page. At some point in the future we might extract this data automaticly from the docs using  [[Gnome Doc Utils]].
 
##: Currently it is also necessary to replace in <tt>{guide|help}/<lang>/Makefile.am</tt> the "C" in both occurrences of <tt>$(docname)-C.omf</tt> by <lang>.
 
## There are some general headers, which do not appear in the xml-files in your locale directory. But they can be translated by adding ''a section in '''xsl/l10n.xml'''''. Obey the comment at the beginning. If you use non-ASCII characters, you should run <code>recode -d <input_encoding>..h0 l10n.xml</code>, where input_encoding might be u8 for UTF8, to get them right encoded.
 
## In addition to the text, you need to ''recreate the image files in '''guide/C/figures''''' so that they are appropriate to your language. For details (size, style,...) see [[Documentation_Update_Instructions#Images and screenshots]].
 
### Most of them are '''screenshots''' of a gnucash session - save them as png files because this will use a lossless compression. In theory some of the files in gnucash/doc/examples could be a starting point therefor, but they are currently - 2010-09-17 - broken.
 
### A few figures are in '''scalable vector graphic''' (svg) format. Here you can edit the files e.g. in ''Libre/OpenOffice'' and translate the strings and adjust the size.
 
## Watch out: The documentation itself is ''probably outdated in many places'', as it has been written for the 1.8.0 version of gnucash. You can watch the current progress in [[Concept_Guide#Ongoing_work]]. If you encounter any description that is wrong for the current version of gnucash, do not hesitate to ignore the english original text and instead describe the situation of the current version of gnucash in your translation. It would be even better if you have the time to change the english original text as well, or at least ''file a bug against it'', but even if you can't do that, feel free to describe the actual state of gnucash in your translation and simply ignore the original english text.
 
##: If you file a patch against the english text, you can also file a patch, which adds your name and email address to AUTHORS, so you will become famous. ;-) Ask to apply this latter patch also against gnucash/DOCUMENTERS because both files should have the same content. More details about editing the english text can be found in the [[Documentation Update Instructions]].
 
# Test your xml files for syntax errors by running ''xmllint'' on the '''main file''' ''gnucash-{guide|help}.xml'', e.g.:
 
#: <code>xmllint --valid --noout gnucash-guide.xml</code>
 
#: The program ''xmllint'' is part of the package '''libxml'''.
 
#: '''Tip:''' Some ''xml aware editors'' have a menu entry like ''validate'' to run this test.
 
# Optional: test your work with yelp - there are autotools files, to support you:
 
## After you copied the directory, change to the 'root' of the gnucash-docs package and run once
 
##: <code>./autogen.sh</code>.
 
## If you want to change some default values like installation paths, run
 
##: <code>./configure --help</code>,
 
##: to see the available options.
 
## There are 2 variants of configuration: with or without a separate build directory. The downside of a separate build dir is you will have to <tt>cd</tt> to the builddir to run the make commands and then again <tt>cd</tt> to your sources to edit them again - at least if you work only with command line tools. The benefit is your source directory will not be cluttered. In most cases developers prefer to use a separate build directory.
 
### '''with build directory''' run
 
###: <code>md build</code> ## only once required
 
###: <code>cd build</code> ## every time required, you want to run make or configure
 
###: <code>../configure</code> with your desired options,
 
### '''without build directory''' just run
 
###: <code>./configure</code> with your desired options.
 
##: '''Tip''' for ''Windows'' and ''MacOSX'', which have no Yelp: use <tt>--disable-scrollkeeper</tt>
 
## After your editing of the files, run
 
##: <code>make</code>
 
##: for some additional processing. The default target are xml files for yelp. Other targets like html, pdf, ... must be given explicit:
 
##: <code>make html</code>
 
## To check the syntax of your files, run
 
##: <code>make check</code>
 
##: This will run the <code>xmllint</code> command above over the full diretory structure.
 
## If you had choosen something with "$HOME" as prefix in your configuration, run
 
##: <code>make install</code>,
 
##: otherwise run
 
##: <code>sudo make install</code>.
 
## Run
 
##: <code>yelp <path/filename></code>
 
##: with the path, to where you installed the files. This path consists of <tt>$PREFIX/share/gnome/help/gnucash-guide/LL/gnucash-guide.xml</tt> or gnucash-help.xml.
 
##:;Tip: <code>export XDG_DATA_DIRS=/home/<yourname>/<your-install-dir>/gnucash-docs/share:${XDG_DATA_DIRS}:/usr/local/share:/usr/share</code>
 
##:: will tell yelp the path to your version.
 
## Repeat steps 4-7 until everything is right.
 
# Update the branches of your local repo often:
 
#:<code> git checkout maint              # switch to maint</code>
 
#:<code> git pull --rebase              # update it</code>
 
#:<code> git rebase maint working-branch # update working-branch</code>
 
#:<code> git checkout working-branch    # switch back to working-branch</code>
 
# Follow [[#Submitting your work direct to GnuCash]].
 
 
 
To translate the help files, repeat steps 2-10 but replace the "guide"
 
directory with "help".
 
 
 
'''Committers:''' If it builds fine, add the directory changes from 2. also to <tt>gnucash/maint/packaging/win32/install-impl.sh</tt> and merge the change to master, if required.
 
 
 
=== DocBook xml editors ===
 
 
 
For editing these DocBook xml files, various editors can be used: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook might contain pointers to some, or also http://www.tldp.org/LDP/LDP-Author-Guide/html/tools-edit.html . Some developers use [[Eclipse]].
 
 
 
People have said that AbiWord and OpenOffice / LibreOffice have support for DocBook available, in which case you could directly edit gnucash's xml files with those. However, those editors will probably not work with the current multi-file setup where each chapter is in a separate XML file and the main XML file contains points to the chapters' files. As a workaround, you can copy the relevant parts of the main XML file into the chapter's file by a plain text editor so that it "looks like" one single DocBook document. This can be opened with OpenOffice/LibreOffice and edited as normal. After that, the added parts from the main file need to be removed again, and then you have the edited chapter text.
 
 
 
=== Using po editors ===
 
 
 
Some translators are more familiar with using po file editors like poedit, Kbabel, Gtranslator etc. For those people, it is possible to convert the content of the help documents (the DocBook XML files) into po files, translate the messages in the po file, and convert the result back into xml. This section describes how to use this approach for the gnucash help documents.
 
 
 
;The downside of this approach: It will be much harder for the documenters to fix e.g. broken links in times where you are inactive.
 
 
 
In order to use po files you have first to convert xml files to po files, translate them and then convert back to xml.
 
 
 
First you have to install a fresh version of gnome-doc-utils. For example in a Fedora 13 system
 
<code> yum install gnome-doc-utils</code>.
 
 
 
#Do the conversion with the following commands (xx is your language code, example: el for Greek):
 
#: <code>xml2po -o helpfile.xml.pot helpfile.xml</code>
 
#: <code>mv helpfile.xml.pot helpfile.xml.xx.po</code>
 
#Translate helpfile.xml.xx.po using your favorite po editor.
 
#Convert back to xml:
 
#: <code>xml2po -e -p helpfile.xml.xx.po -o xx_helpfile.xml helpfile.xml</code>
 
#Test your translated xml file as mention above:
 
#: <code>xmllint --valid --noout xx.helpfile.xml</code>
 
#Remove xx from xx_helpfile.xml and you are ready to commit it in your language help directory
 
 
 
=== Workaround for the broken OpenSuse help system ===
 
 
 
As in OpenSuse 10.x and 11.x the help system is broken, there is a workaround, to review the result of your work. Locate gnucash-guide.xml in your system, probably /usr/local/share/gnome/help/gnucash/C. Then from that directory do
 
 
 
xmlto -o /path-to-where-you-want-to-store-docs/ html gnucash-guide.xml
 
 
 
which will make an html copy of the docs.
 
 
 
Copy over the 'figures' directory with contents to your html directory above
 
and set a bookmark in browser to the index.html so that you get the docs
 
any time you need them. The context sensitive facility is lost, but for
 
general reading it works.[https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2008-September/026699.html]
 
 
 
=== GnuCash Maintainer Tasks ===
 
For new languages the core developers have some additional tasks:
 
 
 
==== New Script ====
 
Check <code>make pdf</code>! Do we need additional TTFs?
 
 
 
==== First Nightly ====
 
Ask the webmaster of code.gnucash.org to create the new directory.
 
 
 
==== First Release ====
 
Adjust htdocs ...
 
  
 
== How to translate the files containing the new account hierarchies==
 
== How to translate the files containing the new account hierarchies==
Line 1,022: Line 989:
 
:However, please take a moment to think about the intention of the account hierarchy templates. The intention of those files is much more language-related than any other of the files inside gnucash. A string-by-string translation is not the best thing to do here. Instead, you can and should find out an actual recommended account structure which makes sense in your language, and implement that one in your language. By this, I mean several of the english accounts make sense only in the U.S., but probably not in other countries. Hence, your translated account template should not contain them. Also, you can add additional parts of the account templates for your language as well, if the users are likely to need it.  
 
:However, please take a moment to think about the intention of the account hierarchy templates. The intention of those files is much more language-related than any other of the files inside gnucash. A string-by-string translation is not the best thing to do here. Instead, you can and should find out an actual recommended account structure which makes sense in your language, and implement that one in your language. By this, I mean several of the english accounts make sense only in the U.S., but probably not in other countries. Hence, your translated account template should not contain them. Also, you can add additional parts of the account templates for your language as well, if the users are likely to need it.  
  
:For example, in the U.S., users are likely to own a car, and for this reason there is an account structure template for "Car". If in another hypothetical country users are likely to own, say, a spaceship instead of a car, you should remove the "Car" template and instead create a new account structure that represents all accounts related to the ownership of a spaceship, and offer this as additional "Spaceship" template.
+
:For example, in the U.S., users are likely to own a car, and for this reason there is an account structure template for "Car". If in another hypothetical region users are likely to own, say, a spaceship instead of a car, you should remove the "Car" template and instead create a new account structure that represents all accounts related to the ownership of a spaceship, and offer this as additional "Spaceship" template.
  
 
:In other words, you should feel free to create a completely new account template structure that is most suited to your language. The english-language templates are just a proposal, but will need further adaption and not a string-by-string translation.
 
:In other words, you should feel free to create a completely new account template structure that is most suited to your language. The english-language templates are just a proposal, but will need further adaption and not a string-by-string translation.
Line 1,035: Line 1,002:
 
=== Initialize accounts/<locale> ===
 
=== Initialize accounts/<locale> ===
 
* If it does not already exists, execute the following steps to initialize your <tt>accounts/<locale></tt> directory:
 
* If it does not already exists, execute the following steps to initialize your <tt>accounts/<locale></tt> directory:
# Create a new directory <tt>accounts/<locale></tt>.
+
# Copy the directory <tt>accounts/C</tt> to <tt>accounts/<locale></tt>.
# Copy the <tt>acctchrt_*</tt> files from <tt>accounts/C</tt> to <tt>accounts/<locale></tt>
+
#;Tip: If there is already a directory in your language, but for a different region you can instead also copy that.
# Do not change any xml tags.
+
# In the directory <tt>accounts/</tt> change the file CMakeLists.txt and add your <locale> to both alphabetical sorted lists:
# In the directory <tt>accounts/</tt>, change the file Makefile.am and add your <locale> to the only line in that file.
+
## <syntaxhighlight lang="CMake">
# Add the path of your Makefile.am to <tt>AC_CONFIG_FILES</tt> in <tt>configure.ac</tt> in the toplevel directory of the project.
+
add_subdirectory(C)
 +
:
 +
add_subdirectory(<locale>)
 +
:</syntaxhighlight>
 +
## <syntaxhighlight lang="CMake">set(accounts_DIST ${C_DIST} ...  ${<locale>_DIST} ... ${dist_list} PARENT_SCOPE)</syntaxhighlight>
 +
# In <tt>accounts/<locale>/CMakeLists.txt</tt> adjust the <locale>: <syntaxhighlight lang="CMake">
 +
:
 +
set_dist_list(<locale>_DIST ${dist_account_DATA} CMakeLists.txt)
 +
 
 +
install(FILES ${dist_account_DATA} DESTINATION ${ACCOUNTS_INSTALL_DIR}/<locale>)
 +
file(COPY ${dist_account_DATA} DESTINATION ${ACCOUNTS_BUILD_DIR}/<locale>)
 +
</syntaxhighlight>
 +
#;Note: The next 2 steps are are discussed in [[#Localize the Account Charts]] below.
 +
# Localize <tt>acctchrt_full.gnucash-xea</tt>. This is only a helper file where you have all accounts in their context.
 +
# Now create the real modules by merging the respective parts from <tt>acctchrt_full.gnucash-xe</tt> in the other acctchrt_*.gnucash-xea files.
 +
* If you remove or create new files, adjust in <tt>accounts/<locale>/CMakeLists.txt</tt> the list <syntaxhighlight lang="CMake">
 +
set(dist_account_DATA
 +
  ...)
 +
</syntaxhighlight>
 +
* Whenever you changed one or more <tt>CMakeLists.txt</tt> files, you have to rerun <syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
 +
cd ${SOURCEDIR}
 +
cmake <your options>
 +
cd ${BUILDDIR} # e.g. .build
 +
make # or ninja</syntaxhighlight>
  
 
=== Localize the Account Charts ===
 
=== Localize the Account Charts ===
Line 1,048: Line 1,038:
 
For each ''desired'' <tt>acctchrt_*</tt> file in that directory:
 
For each ''desired'' <tt>acctchrt_*</tt> file in that directory:
 
# Change the <tt>gnc-act:title</tt>, <tt>gnc-act:short-description</tt>, and <tt>gnc-act:long-description</tt> to contain appropriately translated text. Do not add any newlines in the long description except at the end and begining of the string.
 
# Change the <tt>gnc-act:title</tt>, <tt>gnc-act:short-description</tt>, and <tt>gnc-act:long-description</tt> to contain appropriately translated text. Do not add any newlines in the long description except at the end and begining of the string.
# For each <tt>gnc:account</tt> in the file translate the <tt>act:name</tt>, and <tt>act:description</tt> fields.  Please do not translate any other fields.
+
# For each <tt>gnc:account</tt> in the file
# To avoid typos, run the [[AccountHierarchyTemplate#Syntax Check]].
+
## translate the <tt>act:name</tt>, and <tt>act:description</tt> fields.
 +
## Optionally you can
 +
### assign an '''account number''' <tt><act:code>1234</act:code></tt> after <tt><act:commodity-scu></tt> or
 +
### add a '''note''' as i.e. in <syntaxhighlight lang="xml" highlight="6-9">  <act:slots>
 +
    <slot>
 +
      <slot:key>hidden</slot:key>
 +
      <slot:value type="string">true</slot:value>
 +
    </slot>
 +
    <slot>
 +
      <slot:key>notes</slot:key>
 +
      <slot:value type="string">Some additional text about the usage of this account</slot:value>
 +
    </slot>
 +
    <slot>
 +
      <slot:key>placeholder</slot:key>
 +
      <slot:value type="string">true</slot:value>
 +
    </slot>
 +
  </act:slots>
 +
</syntaxhighlight>
 +
#: Please do ''not translate'' any other fields or the internally used ROOT account.
 +
# To avoid typos, run the [[Account Hierarchy Template#Syntax Check]].
 
# New files to be shown to the user must be added to the <tt>account_DATA</tt> section,
 
# New files to be shown to the user must be added to the <tt>account_DATA</tt> section,
 
#:helper files like ''acctchrt_full.gnucash-xea'' to <tt>EXTRA_DIST</tt> in <tt>Makefile.am</tt>.
 
#:helper files like ''acctchrt_full.gnucash-xea'' to <tt>EXTRA_DIST</tt> in <tt>Makefile.am</tt>.
Line 1,061: Line 1,070:
 
tags from the accounts/C/acctchrt_* files.
 
tags from the accounts/C/acctchrt_* files.
  
If you wish to add new accounts manually, you will need some additional guids, those funny random numbers. To get them you can use:
+
If you wish to add '''new accounts''' manually, you will need some additional ''guids'', those funny random numbers. To get them you can use: <SyntaxHighlight lang="sh">
gnucash-make-guids
+
uuidgen | sed -e 's/-//g'
or, if that command does not exist,
+
</SyntaxHighlight>
uuidgen | sed -e 's/-//g'
+
or use an online uuid generator like [https://www.guidgenerator.com/ this one] (any other one will do as well). Be sure to untick "Hyphens" to generate gnucash compatible guids. If you forget or the site you use doesn't offer that option, simply remove the hyphens yourself.
 +
;Dependencies:''uuidgen'' is in a package ''''util-linux'''', '''sed''' has its own package. <!-- on opensuse; add different names for other distris -->
  
[[AccountHierarchyTemplate]] describes, how to create new templates e.g. for business purpose according local rules.
+
[[Account Hierarchy Template]] describes, how to create new templates e.g. for business purpose according local rules.
  
 
=== Test your Work ===
 
=== Test your Work ===
Line 1,077: Line 1,087:
 
;Note: This section is under developement and mostly untested!
 
;Note: This section is under developement and mostly untested!
  
As of the beginning of 2015 there is an nice US tax module with a report and export in TXF format.
+
As of the beginning of 2015 there is a nice US tax module, with a report and export in TXF format, and a small German (de_DE) derivate for the monthly VAT declaration. You can compare them to see how you can tweak them to get something else.
Additional there is a small de_DE derivate for the monthly VAT declaration. you can compare them to see, how you can tweak them to get something else.
 
  
 
=== Tax Table ===
 
=== Tax Table ===
From https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/blob/maint/src/tax/us get the files
+
Because it is also used by <tt>Edit->Tax Report Options</tt>it is part of the [{{URL:GH}}Gnucash/gnucash/tree/stable/libgnucash/tax/ GnuCash library]:
* txf.scm - the tables, and
+
# Copy <tt>us</tt> into a new subfolder with the lowercased  ISO code of your region.
* txf-help.scm - the descriptive help strings for each TXF code. This is also used to get a table in gnucash-docs/help/
+
#:It contains the following files
 
+
## tax.scm - is only a linking element, where you have to replace <tt>us</tt> by your region twice.
They have relative simple table structures:
+
## txf.scm - the tables, and
(define txf-tax-entity-types  
+
## txf-help.scm - the descriptive help strings for each TXF code. This is also used to get a table in gnucash-docs/help/
contains a list of forms for different entities (person, company,...).
+
#They have relative simple table structures: <syntaxhighlight lang="scm">
(define txf-income-categories ...
+
(define txf-tax-entity-types  
(define txf-expense-categories ...
+
</syntaxhighlight>
contain for each of the above lists the entries. If you compare this file with the respective *_DE file, you can see an example localization with additional categories:
+
#:contains a list of forms for different entities (person, company ). <syntaxhighlight lang="scm">
  (define txf-asset-categories ...
+
(define txf-income-categories
  (define txf-liab-eq-categories ...
+
(define txf-expense-categories
It should be possible to adapt the lists for your tax forms. Then you might submit them to an enhancement request in buzilla, product:Gnucash, component:TXF Export.
+
</syntaxhighlight>
 +
#: contain for each of the above lists the entries. If you compare this file with the respective files in <tt>de</tt>, you can see an example localization with additional categories: <syntaxhighlight lang="scm">
 +
  (define txf-asset-categories
 +
  (define txf-liab-eq-categories
 +
</syntaxhighlight>
 +
#: It should be possible to adapt the lists for your tax forms.
  
 
=== Report and Export===
 
=== Report and Export===
 
Probably you need to have other export reports. That are in
 
Probably you need to have other export reports. That are in
https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/tree/maint/src/report/locale-specific/us like
+
{{URL:GH}}Gnucash/gnucash/tree/stable/gnucash/report/reports/locale-specific/us like
 
* txf-export.scm
 
* txf-export.scm
 
* us.scm is unused
 
* us.scm is unused
Line 1,103: Line 1,117:
  
 
== How to translate the website ==
 
== How to translate the website ==
* Get a checkout of https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash-htdocs
+
:;Note about OS: These instructions are written for linux. They will probably work on other unix-like systems as well, but not on Windows. On Windows you may be able to do this if you set up a linux-like environment (with cygwin or MinGW[-w64]), but that's untested so far. Please report your findings here.
* Run the command <pre>make pot</pre>
+
 
 +
* Get a checkout of {{URL:GH}}Gnucash/gnucash-htdocs
 +
* Run the command <syntaxhighlight lang="sh">make pot</syntaxhighlight>
 
* Then depending on whether or not a translation for you language exists already (complete or not):
 
* Then depending on whether or not a translation for you language exists already (complete or not):
*;Existing translation:<br>Run the command <pre>msgmerge po/LL.po po/gnucash-htdocs.pot -o po/LL.po</pre> where LL is your language code, see [[#Naming Convention]] above.
+
*;Existing translation:<br>Run the command <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">
*:;Alternative: <pre>make msgmerge</pre> will update ''all'' .po files
+
msgmerge --previous -U po/LL.po po/gnucash-htdocs.pot
*;New translation:<br> In the po directory run <pre>msginit</pre> If that fails copy the newly created file po/gnucash-htdocs.pot to po/LL.po, where LL is your language code, see [[#Build a new .po file]] earlier.
+
</syntaxhighlight> where LL is your language code, see [[#Naming Convention]] above.
 +
*:;Alternative: <syntaxhighlight lang="sh">make msgmerge</syntaxhighlight> will update ''all'' .po files
 +
*;New translation:<br> In the po directory run  
 +
*:;As translator: <syntaxhighlight lang=sh>msginit</syntaxhighlight> This will insert your name, email and locale settings into the new file. If that fails copy the newly created file po/gnucash-htdocs.pot to po/LL.po, where LL is your language code, see [[#Build a new .po file]] earlier.
 +
*:;As maintainer: <syntaxhighlight lang=sh># Set LL=<language code>
 +
msginit --no-translator --locale=$LL</syntaxhighlight> This will create  a new file $LL.po without personal data. Continue with [[#Maintainers Task]].
 
* Translate the po/LL.po file as described in [[#Translating the .po file]].
 
* Translate the po/LL.po file as described in [[#Translating the .po file]].
 
*;Priority:
 
*;Priority:
Line 1,114: Line 1,135:
 
::;Low: sizing.phtml (outdated) search/templates/NMZ.* (unused)
 
::;Low: sizing.phtml (outdated) search/templates/NMZ.* (unused)
 
::;Medium: the rest depends on you.
 
::;Medium: the rest depends on you.
* Run <pre>msgfmt -c --statistics po/LL.po</pre> to see your success.
+
* Run <syntaxhighlight lang="sh">msgfmt -c --statistics po/LL.po</syntaxhighlight> to see your success.
* Optionally run <pre>recode -d <input_encoding>..h0 po/LL.po</pre> to get special characters HTML quoted.
+
* Optionally run <Syntaxhighlight lang="sh">recode -d <input_encoding>..h0 po/LL.po</Syntaxhighlight> to get special characters HTML quoted.
* Send the LL.po to gnucash-devel; the maintainers will commit this to git and add the appropriate Makefile rules upon the first git commit.
+
* Send your LL.po either as
 
+
** GitHub Pull Request or
;Note about OS: These instructions are written for linux. They will probably work on other unix-like systems as well, but not on Windows. On Windows you may be able to do this if you set up a linux-like environment (with cygwin or MinGW[-w64]), but that's untested so far.
+
** attachment of a Bugzilla enhancement request to the mainteiner team.
 
 
===Maintainers Task===
 
To make the changes visible, you will have to
 
* run
 
msgfmt -c --statistics po/<ll>.po -o locale/<ll>/LC_MESSAGES/gnucash-htdocs.mo
 
: or to compile ''all'' translations
 
make mos
 
* and include the mo file(s) in your commit.
 
 
 
== Tips for Developers ==
 
 
 
This section collects some notes for developers/programmers on how to correctly prepare their code for translations.
 
 
 
=== How to make strings in code translatable ===
 
 
 
Strings in Glade files are marked for translations by the <tt>(_ )</tt> functions.
 
 
 
Normally, strings in C code just need to be enclosed with the <tt>_( )</tt> function (well, actually it is a macro expanding into a function, but this is usually just an implementation detail). For example,
 
func("A translatable string!");
 
should instead be written as
 
func(_("A translatable string!"));
 
 
 
However, it is important to keep in mind that <tt>_( )</tt> is a function; this means that in certain situations it cannot be used. For example,
 
gchar* array_of_strings[] = {_("first string"), _("second string"), _("third string")};
 
would cause a compiler error. Instead, these strings should be wrapped with the <tt>N_( )</tt> macro, which is declared as <code>#define N_(String) gettext_noop(String)</code>. Then, whenever one of the strings is actually ''used'' (as opposed to ''declared''), it should be wrapped with the <tt>_( )</tt> function again:
 
gchar* array_of_strings[] = {N_("first string"), N_("second string"), N_("third string")};
 
func(_(array_of_strings[0]));
 
 
 
See also: [[Translation#Disambiguation_prefix | Disambiguation prefix]]
 
 
 
==== Plural Forms ====
 
 
 
Not all languages have the same simple kind of plural forms as english. See [http://www.gnu.org/s/hello/manual/gettext/Plural-forms.html gettexts Plural-forms] for details.
 
 
 
==== Empty Strings ====
 
There is no need, to mark an empty strings as translatable. The gettext tools use the empty string for their message catalog header. So it will confuse translators to have your preceding comment in the header of their .po file.
 
 
 
=== How to give the translators a clue ===
 
 
 
Sometimes it is useful to give the translators some additional information about the meaning of a string. To achieve this effect, you can insert a section of comment lines ''direct'' before the related string, where the first comment starts with "Translators:". There must not be any control statement between comment and string.
 
 
 
Example: <SyntaxHighLight lang='c'>
 
/* Translators: the following string deals about:
 
  * The Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything
 
  * Source:
 
  * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy */
 
func(_("42")); </SyntaxHighLight>
 
 
 
 
 
In the pot and po files, this comment will show up as follows:
 
<SyntaxHighLight lang='po'>
 
#. Translators: the following string deals about:
 
#. The Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything
 
#. Source:
 
#. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy
 
#: foo/bar.c:123
 
msgid "42"
 
msgstr "" </SyntaxHighLight>
 
 
 
 
 
'''Note:''' An empty comment line will end the process. If the string " Source:" were missing, the URL were not part of the output.
 
 
 
While this feature seems to work fine in C sources, it seems not to work in the scm files. Any suggestions, to fix this are welcome.
 
 
 
==== In SCM files ====
 
If the first expression has a translatable string and the file has a long header comment, split the line before the string and insert a translator comment. Otherwise the POT file will be flooded with file headers.
 
Example:<SyntaxHighLight lang='scheme'>
 
;; Boston, MA  02110-1301,  USA      gnu@gnu.org
 
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
 
 
 
 
 
(define GNC_COMMODITY_NS_CURRENCY
 
;; Translators: Namespaces of commodities
 
  (gettext "CURRENCY"))
 
</SyntaxHighLight>
 
 
 
==== In glade files ====
 
 
 
In glade 3.16, using the edit button for a label, one can enter translatable, translation context and comment.
 
From [https://bugs.launchpad.net/intltool/+bug/705420 intltool fails to extract comments from glade-type files when not last attributes]:
 
<SyntaxHighLight lang='xml'><property name="label" translatable="yes" context="infinitive" comments="my comment"></SyntaxHighLight> should work.
 
 
 
==== Introducing new terms ====
 
If you introduce new terms which are more than once used, you should include them to [[#The_glossary_file]]. The instruction is in [[#Terms missing or inadequate in the glossary file]].
 
 
 
=== Further Reading ===
 
 
 
If you want to read more about this topic, [http://live.gnome.org/GnomeI18nDeveloperTips GnomeI18nDeveloperTips] might be a good starting point.
 
 
 
Follow the rules of the [https://developer.gnome.org/hig/stable/ Gnome Human Interface Guide] like [https://developer.gnome.org/hig/stable/writing-style.html Writing style] and [https://developer.gnome.org/hig/stable/typography.html Typography].
 
 
 
More technical and historical details can be found in [http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html#Programmers The Programmer’s View of the Gettext Manual].
 
  
 
== Background ==
 
== Background ==
 
This section was started to get some overview, '''work in progress!'''
 
This section was started to get some overview, '''work in progress!'''
For details see the [http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html GetText Manual].
+
Beyond it helped to get rid of the outdated [[#IntlTool]] in version 2.7.6.
 +
For details see the [{{URL:gettext-manual}} GetText Manual].
  
 
=== Packages ===
 
=== Packages ===
Line 1,223: Line 1,153:
 
** -tools: (autopoint), gettextize, msg*, xgettext, ...
 
** -tools: (autopoint), gettextize, msg*, xgettext, ...
 
** -runtime-tools-doc: manuals etc.
 
** -runtime-tools-doc: manuals etc.
* intltool: Intltool*
+
* (only up to 2.7.5) intltool: Intltool*
 
 
====IntlTool====
 
From [http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/intltool/ freedesktop Software/intltools] intro, last edited Sat 18 May 2013 05:42:11 PM PDT:
 
:intltool is a set of tools to centralize translation of many different file formats using GNU gettext-compatible PO files.
 
:The intltool collection can be used to do these things:
 
:* Extract translatable strings from various source files (.xml.in,glade, .desktop.in, .server.in, .oaf.in).
 
:* Collect the extracted strings together with messages from traditional source files (.c, .h) in po/$(PACKAGE).pot.
 
:* Merge back the translations from .po files into .xml, .desktop and oaf files. This merge step will happen at build resp. installation time.
 
 
 
And in the more recent [https://launchpad.net/intltool Launchpad Internationalization Tool Collection site] it seems to concentrate on xml.
 
 
 
'''Conclusio''': In case we remove it from gnucash.git, we should not remove it from gnucash-docs as IIRC at least one translation is using it - I didn't check htdocs.
 
 
 
Googles first hit for "'''Intltool''' manaual" is [https://wiki.gnome.org/TranslationProject/DevGuidelines/Localize%20using%20gettext%20and%20intltool Localize using gettext and intltool], which starts with
 
: This page consists of some parts from Christian Rose's L10N Guidelines for Developers document that could not be moved anywhere else. It does not provide enough information on localization your application, and may be outdated. Please look for additional resources for developers at TranslationProject wiki pages.
 
: Ideally, this will be integrated together with Malcolm Treddinick's Internationalising GNOME application document and GnomeI18nDeveloperTips wiki page.
 
  
 
=== Our Build Process ===
 
=== Our Build Process ===
The build process goes through the following scipts:
+
This was the old (upto 2.6) autotools build process, which went through the following scripts:
 
   
 
   
 
====== autogen.sh ======
 
====== autogen.sh ======
 +
;Note: Autotools were only used up to 2.6 branch. 2.7 and later use [[CMake]] instead.
 
;glib-gettextize: helps to prepare a source package for being internationalized through gettext. It is a ''variant of the gettextize'' that ships with gettext.  
 
;glib-gettextize: helps to prepare a source package for being internationalized through gettext. It is a ''variant of the gettextize'' that ships with gettext.  
 
:glib-gettextize differs from gettextize in that it doesn't create an intl/ subdirectory and doesn't modify po/ChangeLog (note that newer versions of gettextize behave like this when called with the --no-changelog option).
 
:glib-gettextize differs from gettextize in that it doesn't create an intl/ subdirectory and doesn't modify po/ChangeLog (note that newer versions of gettextize behave like this when called with the --no-changelog option).
  
»Note that on GNU systems, you ''don't need to link with libintl'' because the '''gettext library functions are already contained in GNU libc'''.« (glibc) [http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html#Overview]
+
»Note that on GNU systems, you ''don't need to link with libintl'' because the '''gettext library functions are already contained in GNU libc'''.« (glibc) [{{URL:gettext-manual}}#Overview].
 
 
;intltoolize: copy intltool related files to software package
 
  
 
====== configure.ac ======
 
====== configure.ac ======
Line 1,262: Line 1,175:
 
     [GetText version number])
 
     [GetText version number])
  
AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION(x.yy.zz) can be used to require a version. We should use it to avoid ...
+
AM_GNU_GETTEXT_REQUIRE_VERSION|AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION(x.yy.zz) can be used to require a version. We should use it to avoid ...
 
* TP expects > 0.11.
 
* TP expects > 0.11.
* intltool-update checks for GNU gettext >= 0.12
 
 
* gnulib expects >= 0.17
 
* gnulib expects >= 0.17
 
* RHEL7 offers 0.18.2 (RHEL6 0.17)
 
* RHEL7 offers 0.18.2 (RHEL6 0.17)
 
* Debian Stable offers 0.18.1 and in backport 0.19.3
 
* Debian Stable offers 0.18.1 and in backport 0.19.3
* Glade2 msgctxt and Glade3 were implemented in 0.18.3 - July 2013
+
* '''Glade2 msgctxt''' and Glade3 were implemented in 0.18.3 - July 2013
* GSettings and Desktop entries are implemented in 0.19 - June 2014
+
* '''GSettings''' and '''Desktop''' entries are implemented in 0.19 - June 2014
 
* and got bugfixes until Version 0.19.3 - October 2014
 
* and got bugfixes until Version 0.19.3 - October 2014
* Scheme format strings got a fix in 0.19.4 - December 2014
+
* '''Scheme''' format strings got a fix in 0.19.4 - December 2014
 +
* '''AppData''' support: [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2015-09/msg00003.html gettext-0.19.6 released] - 2015-09
 +
* ? custom XML formats in 0.19.7
 +
:<gjanssens> GtkUIManager files don't contain translatable strings as far as I know. They're not in POTFIILES.in either.
 +
* at the time of our last update: [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2016-06/msg00006.html gettext-0.19.8.1 released] - 2016-06
 +
* [{{BugURL}}/show_bug.cgi?id=725296#c21 gjanssens sv->swedish patch for Windows] is in gettext 0.20. It is also the first version , which extracts <developer_name> from appdata.xml. [{{ListURL}}/logs/2020/01/15.html#T15:20:46 IRC log]
 +
* recent: [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2019-05/msg00011.html GNU gettext 0.20.1 released] - May 12, 2019
  
 
This setting then can be used by autoPoInt. Watch the caveaets from https://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/manual/html_node/gettextize-and-autopoint.html:
 
This setting then can be used by autoPoInt. Watch the caveaets from https://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/manual/html_node/gettextize-and-autopoint.html:
Line 1,315: Line 1,233:
  
 
====== make-gnucash-potfile.in ======
 
====== make-gnucash-potfile.in ======
This is a self written perl script from the time as gettext had several issues. It creates '''po/potfiles.in''', the "list of files which contain translatable strings".
+
This is a self written perl script from the time as gettext had several issues. It creates '''po/potfiles.in''', the "list of files which contain translatable strings". This script is not used in a cmake based build environment for gnucash. As gnucash 2.7.4 and more recent is cmake only, this file has been removed starting from that release.
 
 
 
 
====== po/makefile.in.in ======
 
This is always copied from your installed intltool package. It contains <pre>
 
MSGMERGE = INTLTOOL_EXTRACT="$(INTLTOOL_EXTRACT)" XGETTEXT="$(XGETTEXT)" srcdir=$(srcdir) $(INTLTOOL_UPDATE) --gettext-package $(GETTEXT_PACKAGE) --dist
 
GENPOT  = INTLTOOL_EXTRACT="$(INTLTOOL_EXTRACT)" XGETTEXT="$(XGETTEXT)" srcdir=$(srcdir) $(INTLTOOL_UPDATE) --gettext-package $(GETTEXT_PACKAGE) --pot</pre>
 
So it calls in both cases intltool-update with different parameters.
 
 
 
There are several commands in the packages with overlapping funtionality:
 
 
 
;intltool-prepare: Extracts all localized strings in .desktop style files (including ".desktop", ".soundlist", ".keys" and ".directory") ''into corresponding '''po''' files''. See <code>man:/intltool-prepare(8)</code>
 
  
;intltool-extract: extracts strings in the specified XML/INI type SOURCE_FILE and writes them ''into a '''C header''' file''. Currently supported types are:
+
====== xgettext ======
:"gettext/glade" (.glade, .glade2)
 
:"gettext/gsettings" (.gschema.xml)
 
:"gettext/ini" (Generic INI file)
 
:"gettext/keys" (.keys)
 
:"gettext/rfc822deb" (RFC 822 format file) Debian configuration files
 
:"gettext/quoted" (all strings within "")
 
:"gettext/schemas" (.schemas)
 
:"gettext/scheme" (.scm)
 
:"gettext/xml" (Generic XML file)
 
  
 
;xgettext: Extract translatable strings from given input files. See --language for supported list:
 
;xgettext: Extract translatable strings from given input files. See --language for supported list:
Line 1,345: Line 1,243:
 
:;--foreign-user: omit FSF copyright in output for foreign user
 
:;--foreign-user: omit FSF copyright in output for foreign user
 
:;--msgid-bugs-address=EMAIL@ADDRESS: set report address for msgid bugs
 
:;--msgid-bugs-address=EMAIL@ADDRESS: set report address for msgid bugs
 
+
<References />
;intltool-update: ''updates PO template file'' and merge translations with it. You must change working directory to the subdirectory containing translations (usually "po/") before running intltool-update. Special options:
 
:;--maintain: Search for left out files, which should have been listed in POTFILES.in or POTFILES.skip. A list of all these files are written into another file called "missing".
 
:;--headers: Executes intltool-extract(8) to extract strings inside XML/INI style files listed in POTFILES.in, and writes the extracted strings into header files, so that the strings can be recognised by xgettext(1).
 
:;--report: Display a status report for all translations in the software.
 
:;Warning: Usually you will not want to commit the changed .po files!
 
 
 
;intltool-merge: merge translated strings into various types of file
 
 
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
 
 
[[Category:Translation]]
 

Latest revision as of 15:53, 13 May 2024

Languages 简体中文 עִברִית
Tip
Use Google translation and select your language to get a machine translation of this document.

The concept of this document is to give you step-by-step instructions on how to create or update translations and other localization tasks for the gnucash project.

There are related pages for

programmers: I18N and
project maintainers: Language_Administration.

Contents

Overview

GnuCash has several separate areas that need translations or localization, which are by priority:

The Glossary
A reference in form of a message catalog with terms that are commonly used throughout GnuCash's other components and their explanation. Preferably it should be translated first for each new language to define a consistent terminology for the other parts.
287x66-grey.png
The Program
Its message catalogs contain all text messages for the application's user interface. Not all are equally important though.
287x66-grey.png
Please read at least #Adjust special messages and #Special characters and other tips, if you use one of that services.
The Windows Installer
It contains some 20 strings.
The Account Templates
A set of ready to use account chart snippets for personal users that can be mixed and matched into a full chart of accounts during the creation of a new a new GnuCash file with currently 115 translatable account names.
  • If your government or other authorities offer specific templates for business users, you can create them, too.
The Documentation
The Help Manual and the Tutorial and Concepts Guide. These documents explain how to use GnuCash. They are written in DocBook, an XML variant.
The Website
While mostly written in PHP/HTML, it uses message catalogs, too.
287x66-grey.png
  • In theory one could also translate recent announcements from the news directory into the language specific subfolder, but ususally there are more important tasks around.
The Income Tax Tables
They require some knowledge of your regional tax rules and are related to account templates.
Currencies
GnuCash uses the translation of the ISO 4217 currency codes and names. This are maintained by the ISO Codes Team. If your language is missing or has issues contact them or contribute:
287x66-white.png

Available Resources

There are many resources to support you at gnucash.org and other places. Don't hesitate to use them.

gnucash.org

We have collected a bunch of useful information for you here in this wiki -

navigate from the main page, or the Special:Categories or use the search function -

and on the website https://www.gnucash.org/.

And we have several channels of communication and a few other useful tools:

IRC
The fastest way to get help on simple questions is using the internet relay chat IRC, as many of the developers hang out there and are eager to help.
Mailing lists
Translators will probably find two or three gnucash mailing lists of interest. If you can not find the answers to your questions in their Mailing_Lists#Mailing List Archives, feel free to ask them.
  • For language and region specific questions, where you should discuss terms and ask for proofreading of your work, use your languages mailing list. Currently we have
    gnucash-[pt_]br, de, es, fr, it, nl.
If none exists for your language or nobody has an answer there, use the english lists:
  • General use questions and answers are found on the gnucash-users mailing list,
  • specific development questions go to the gnucash-devel list.
  • If you dislike the heavy traffic on the above lists, you should at least subscribe the gnucash-announce list to get informed about new :releases.
To subscribe or view archives of these lists follow the links to the Mailing Lists.

weblate.org

Since 2020-12-14 the translations of some components, currently Glossary, Program and Website, are available at GnuCash @ Hosted Weblate.

Requirement
Only a web browser on your PC or mobile.
Features
  • Most pages of weblate have a help page behind the ? button.
  • Already as anonymous you can add suggestions and comments.
  • After you created there an account, you can edit the translations.
    Tip
    If you also have a GitHub account and linked it there, we can give you some feedback on your contributions.
  • If you already have been a GnuCash translator, tell us
    on irc://irc.gnome.org/gnucash (help about IRC) or
    by a mail to the gnucash-devel list your Weblate name to become a weblate/GnuCash reviewer there.
Note
We appreciate any help on the optimal configuration by experienced weblate users. You can contact the GnuCash team by irc://irc.gnome.org/gnucash or Mailing Lists.

Other Web Based Translation Tools

Several services for translation coordination exist, see Improve Localization Process#Web Based Translation Tools. As we have no experience with them contact the gnucash-devel mailing list before using them.

translationproject.org

The Translation Project coordinates the message cataloges of several programs

Up to Gnucash 4.9 (2021-12)
some of our translators had used it: last files. Most of them are now using Weblate.

Classical Direct Contribution

If you want to work on a new translation and you want to submit it directly to GnuCash, read on.

If you're starting a new translation it's much easier to begin with a tarball, which will include po/gnucash.pot; if you start from a Git clone you'll have to build Gnucash yourself first to generate gnucash.pot.

On Other Sites

Technical Reference
For many components we use the Gettext package. If you need help with msg* commands or the .po file format, read it's manual.
General Translations Guidelines and Tips
General information about how to approach the translation of software can be found here:
Weblate
Gnome
As GnuCash is GTK based we follow their rules for consistency.
KDE
Other Useful Sites
Comparing articles on wikipedia in your language and english can be helpful.
  • There are many online dictionaries, use a search engine like google, to find the best fitting.
  • An index of on-line dictionaries and a lot of other resources can be found at www.yourdictionary.com.
  • In special cases the terminology database of the European Union Inter Active Terminology for Europe can be used, too.

How to submit changes directly to GnuCash

There are several options to contribute to the GnuCash translations:

Weblate

We recommend to use Weblate for existing languages as it has additional checks and other nice features compared to the pure gettext tools.

Online
One hour after you stopped editing it will create a commit on your behalf in its current pull request.
Offline
If you want to work offline, you can download the po file, edit it with your preferred editor, and upload it again. Weblate will then format it in the referred way before commiting it to its current pull request.
Tip
If you have a GitHub account linked to your weblate account you will get informed and can follow the process.

Pull Requests at GitHub

Pull requests are common for all parts which are not covered by weblate.

If you already are a github user you can publish your work as a separate branch on your gnucash[-{[ht]docs|on-windows}] fork and send a pull request to the GnuCash team. If you wish to continue your work before the request was completed, simlply create a new working branch. After the pull request was completed you can delete the related branch again. See Git for details.

Commit messages
  1. Start your commit message with L10N:<LL>:
    were <LL>—or ${LL} below—is your language code.
  2. Append the intended improvement
Example
L10N:de: Update of SKR49 to official 2023 release

Verify the Result

After it got merged, you can …

Website
immediately open {https://www.gnucash.org/
Program
the next day download the (Linux) Flatpak or Windows nightly

to see and test the reslut of your work.

Obsolete Ways

Use they only if you have good reasons not to use one of the ways mentioned before!

Patches at Bugzilla

Before it was recommend to use Bugzilla. :

containing the diff between the old files - if any - and your new files:
  • If you have Git installed, the easiest way to create the patch is git format-patch origin/stable..stable.
  • Else you can use diffutils: diff -u[r] <original path> <modified path> > <name>.patch. See info diff for details.

Mailing lists

You can simply email your completed message catalog (.po file) to the developers at the gnucash-devel mailing list. We'd really rather you use Github or Bugzilla because those are much less likely to get lost or forgotten, but if you really find those too hard we'll try to accommodate you on the list.

Translating the Program

To begin a translation you need either the message template file (gnucash.pot) if you're starting a new translation or the existing message catalog (xx.po or xx_YY.po, where xx is the ISO code for your language and YY the ISO code for a language-variant locale, see Naming Convention). These files are in the gnucash sources, which you can obtain either from our git repository or by downloading the latest release tarball from Sourceforge.

Get the source from Git

GnuCash uses Git as version control system. If it is new for you read An Introduction to Git.

The first thing to do is usually, to download the latest stable branch of gnucash from git and get it to build.[1]

Normally checkout the current stable branch:
git clone https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash ${SOURCEDIR}
cd ${SOURCEDIR}
git checkout stable

The argument ${SOURCEDIR} above can be whatever you want your local directory to be called, and is optional in the first line. If you leave it out, you'll have a directory called gnucash created containing all the source code below your current working dir.

Checkout the documentation (optional, but recommended):
git clone https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash-docs gnucash-docs
cd gnucash-docs
git checkout stable

Update your repository

After this initial git checkout, you can later update your local repository using
git pull --rebase

from anywhere in the tree of ${SOURCEDIR}. We recommend to do it daily when you start your work.

Get packages, which are used while building

  • Dependencies contains the list of packages, which are used while building GnuCash. If some are missing the configuration by cmake or the build by make or ninja will fail.
  • For working on .po files we use several commands starting with msg. This are part of gettext-tools.
Caution
Gettext versions < 0.20 are known not to extract the 'developer_name' xml node, which contains the msgid "GnuCash Project". Do not remove this msgid!
  • Optional
    Translate Toolkit is already used by Weblate and other projects. While gettext offers only a few formal checks Translate Toolkit has many quality checks in its pofilter command.

Under Linux use your package manager and install them.

Steps in the Build System

GnuCash uses the cmake build generator to control the build of all components. Details are described in Building. The following short-form instructions work on Unix systems and assume that you have already set up the dependencies according to the FAQ. If you are building the unstable or master branches you'll need to use your package manager to install two more development packages, boost-all-devel and googletest.

Build system generation

It's generally preferred to use a separate build directory. So let's set one up next to our source directory:
cd /path/to/gnucash # replace the example path with your real source path
mkdir ../gnucash-build
cd ../gnucash-build
Next generate a build system in the build directory. Still in the build system, exectue
cmake -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=../gnucash-install ../gnucash

This will set up a proper build system in the build directory based on the CMakeLists.txt file in the source directory. If generation fails or if you want to refine your build consult Building.

If all goes well you'll end up with a directory structure as follows:
path/to/
  gnucash/          # directory with gnucash sources
  gnucash-build/    # directory to build gnucash and its translation in
  gnucash-install/  # directory to install final result (not needed for development, just for completeness)

Compile

It is recommended that you compile the gnucash source code. It is a good idea to actually run gnucash with your new translations because it is quite helpful to see the phrases in the context of the running program.

Compilation is done by executing the make command in the build directory.

Note
Experienced users may prefer to use Ninja instead of Make. How to so is beyond the scope of this page.
cd ${BUILDDIR} # e.g. path/to/gnucash-build/
make

Run

GnuCash can be run from the build directory as follows:
cd ${BUILDDIR} # e.g. path/to/gnucash-build/
./bin/gnucash # will open gnucash you just built

Note the use of './bin/' in the line to execute gnucash. This is to make sure you run the gnucash executable you just built rather than one that's installed by your distribution. Omitting this explicit path specification in the command will cause your system to launch

your distribution's pre-installed version of gnucash:
gnucash #  will open your distribution's pre-installed gnucash

In either case, you can easily switch between the various languages the gnucash has available by placing the LANG env var before the call to the executable. You can find details in Locale Settings.

Documentation

The GnuCash Help Manual and the Tutorial and Concepts Guide can use the same CMake build system as the code.

  1. git clone gnucash-docs or unpack a gnucash-docs tarball
  2. Using a terminal, go to your gnucash-docs directory
    cd /path/to/gnucash-docs # replace the example path with your real path
    
  3. Make a build directory next to your source directory and go into it
    mkdir ../gnucash-docs-build
    cd ../gnucash-docs-build
    
  4. Configure the build system
    cmake -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=../gnucash-docs-install ../gnucash-docs
    
    These commands will set up a directory structure as follows:
    path/to/
      gnucash-docs/          # directory with gnucash-docs sources
      gnucash-docs-build/    # directory to generate gnucash-docs in various formats
      gnucash-docs-install/  # directory to install final result (not needed for development, just for completeness)
    
  5. still in your build directory run
    make html
    
The new documentation home pages will be
${BUILDDIR}/share/doc/${LOCALE}/gnucash-guide/index.html
and
${BUILDDIR}/share/doc/${LOCALE}/gnucash-manual/index.html
,

where ${LOCALE} is one of C, de, it, ja, or pt (English, German, Italian, Japanese, or Portuguese respectively). You can use the file: URL scheme to point your browser to one of them; the links will work from there.

Naming Convention

The language code is of the following form:

<language>[_<REGION>][.<Charset>][@modifier]
using the well known ISO codes 639-1 for languages and 3166-1 for regions, which are in most cases countries .
  • Only if no 2 letter code exists for your language in ISO_639-1, use the 3 letter code from ISO_639-2.
  • If you are the first translator for your language, you should
    • name your files and directories only with your language code.
    • set Language: in the header of your po file with the full (language and region) code, if significant.
So all people using your language despite of their region will benefit from your work.
  • If there are parts, which are specific for your region, e.g. business account templates respecting local law, then they should be in a <language>_<REGION> directory.
  • The common charset in gnucash is utf8.
  • In the rare case different scripts are used for the same language like kyrilic and latin add for the less used the modifier e.g. sr@latin.

In the following parts of this document 'XXXX' and 'LL'—often prefixed by $ to mark them as variable—refer to your language code.

The glossary file

Inside the po/glossary/ directory should be a "glossary" file for your language. This file contains a bunch of commonly used terms found in GnuCash - and the explanation of a few very specific for GnuCash like the disambiguation between bill, invoice and voucher. It is recommended that you get this file translated first, and use it as a guide when translating the real .po file or the documentation. Please keep in mind that this file will never be visible to a user! The glossary file is only a tool for you, the translators! I repeat: The strings from the glossary file will never be user-visible, they are only used by you, the translator.

Todo
The current files have a very informal form. To make them more useful like conversion in tool specific glossary formats, we should replace
msgid "generic term: term"
by
msgctxt "generic term"
msgid "term"
  1. Go into the glossary directory:
    cd po/glossary/
    
  2. If your .po glossary file does not exist or is older than gnc-glossary.txt, create the template:
    ./txt-to-pot.sh gnc-glossary.txt > gnc-glossary.pot
    
  3. Create or update your language's glossary file:
    • If your .po glossary file does not exist,
    1. use this gnc-glossary.pot file to create it with
      msginit # add -l<locale> if different from your settings
      
    2. Add your file into the set_dist_list(po_glossary_DIST ...) command in glossary/CMakeLists.txt
      set_dist_list(po_glossary_DIST CMakeLists.txt bg.po ca.po da.po de.po el.po es_NI-policy.txt es.po fr.po gnc-glossary.txt he.po
              hr.po hu.po it.po nb.po nl.po pl.po pt_BR.po pt.po ru.po rw.po sk.po sv.po txt-to-pot.sh vi.po zh_CN.po zh_TW.po)
      
      to get it into the tarball.
    3. After changing CMakeLists.txt you have to rerun
      cmake # add your options
      
    • If your .po glossary file exists, but is older than gnc-glossary.txt use the msgmerge program to update it:
      msgmerge --previous -U $LL.po gnc-glossary.pot;
      
  4. Now open your language's glossary file and translate it completely.
  5. Don't forget to #Check syntax and statistics of your .po file.

Terms missing or inadequate in the glossary file

If you detect an important term which is missing or could be better explained,

  • create a pull request at github
for the source file gnc-glossary.txt.
With the exception of the header the lines of this file are alphabetical sorted and have the form:
Msgid<TAB>Comment
Reminder
Does your editor enter <TAB>s or will it replace them with <Space>s?

To test it, run the following steps after you changed gnc-glossary.txt:

  1. To generate a new gnc-glossary.pot:
    ./txt-to-pot.sh gnc-glossary.txt > gnc-glossary.pot
    
  2. run above msgmerge command for your LL.po,
  3. check and translate the new string in this updated glossary file.
  4. If successful, update all *.po files with:
    for i in *.po; do echo -n "$i:"; LANG=C msgmerge --previous -U $i gnc-glossary.pot ; done
    #old form: find *.po -exec /usr/bin/msgmerge --previous -U '{}' gnc-glossary.pot \;
    
Note
The last step can also be done by a maintainer.
LANG=C is only recommend for maintainers to get english error messages.

Get a fresh template

The Portable Object Template (.pot file) is a collection of all translatable strings.

It is important, to repeat this step e.g. after you asked a developer to change an insufficient string or you got an announcement about changed strings like commit messages starting with "I18N: " or containing a "[I18N]" flag.

Tip
If you have problems with this section, you download instead the "current template" from the translationproject.org. But keep in mind it is based on the last release and does not contain recent changes.
  1. If your repository is no fresh checkout, you should first #Update your repository:
    git pull --rebase
    
  2. Only on the first run see Building to set up your build environment depending on your OS.
    Note
    As you can use make or ninja, on this page we write always make <target>. If you decided to use ninja, execute ninja <target> instead.
  3. Then in gnucash, a specific command at the top-level of the build tree (or source tree, if you do not use a separate build directory) will perform all necessary steps for this:
    cd ${BUILDDIR} # adjust ${BUILDDIR}
    make pot
    
  4. If make complains make: *** No rule to make target `<path/to/missing-source-file>', needed by `gnucash.pot'. Stop. there are obsolete relicts from a previous build. Just run
    make clean  # remove obsolete files
    make pot    # try it again
    
  5. Now go into the po directory:
    cd ${SOURCEDIR}/po # adjust ${SOURCEDIR}
    

If your language file already exists, continue with #Update an existing .po file.

Build a new .po file

If there is no .po file for your language, then you can start a new one. Start by

msginit [-lLL[_RR]] [-i<path/to/>gnucash.pot]

where LL is your language and RR your region code, if there is already a different LL.po like e.g. pt and pt_BR.

-i<path/to/>gnucash.pot is required, if you use a separate build dir,
-l... is only required, if your target is different from your environments current language.

This will initialize the meta information with values from your user environment.

Notes
msginit 0.21.1
seems not to know languages spoken in and around India very well. Replace
"Plural-Forms: nplurals=INTEGER; plural=EXPRESSION;\n"
by
"Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=n != 1;\n"
—or whatever is right— in the new created file.
msginit 0.19.3
is querying an obsolete address of the translation project for language teams, but that doesn't matter.

If that does not work you can copy the file gnucash.pot into a work file named LL.po and just edit this file.

Adjust the header

Only if it was not created by msginit and updated via weblate the top of the .po file should be edited slightly.

Header Comments
The comments at the top of the file should be changed to be current:
# Indonesian translations for GnuCash package.
# Terjemahan bahasa Indonesia untuk paket GnuCash.
# Copyright (C) 2020 by the GnuCash developers and the translators listed below.# This file is distributed under the same license as the GnuCash package.
# Triyan W. Nugroho <triyan.wn@gmail.com>, 2020.
# […]
Copyright
Only files which were once maintained by the #translationproject.org should have a FSF copyright for that time range.
Perhaps we should use and update a copyright year range?
Translator List
Weblate will expand the copyright comment by a list of
<Translator name> <email address>, year[ range]
in historical order. You can later copy the list into translator-credits ideally in reverse order.
Conventions of your team (optional)
This is also a good place to record typographic conventions, if more than one person work on the file:
#
# Konventionen/Tastenkürzel:
# »Zitate«: [AltGr]+{[Y]|[X]}
# Gedankenstrich — [AltGr]+[Shift]+[-]
Header Record
The first, empty msgid "" contains information for you and the gettext tools. Each line of the msgstr contains a capitalized entry, a colon and a value. Replace all variables (uppercase words) with something appropriate. In this case, you will be the first author of the translation, and also the
Last-Translator
your name and email address, usually set by weblate. This person responsible for the recent change set, so we need an email address to contact you if there are issues.
Language-Team
Most languages are maintained by teams and everybody wants to get informed. That is usually the weblate language team. Before #translationproject.org or the german Gnucash translator team have been in use.
If you are not using weblate enter the teams name and email address. If you are no member of a team, keep it empty or write NONE.
Tip
You can reuse this line in translator-credits.
Language
Already set by msginit it should be the same as the filename without extension, usually the ISO code of your language.
Project-Id-Version
<Package name> (set by msgint) and <Version> (updated on msgmerges).
Report-Msgid-Bugs-To
Should already been set by msginit to https://bugs.gnucash.org/buglist.cgi?roduct=GnuCash&component=Translations or similar, where you can report issues with the msgids like
  • "There is a typo in <msgid>" or
  • "<msgid> is impossible to translate to <your language> because of the grammatical difference …"
if nobody reacts on your comments in weblate.
POT-Creation-Date
gets updated by msgmerge.
PO-Revision-Date
The timestamp of the last modification.
  • Weblate and editors with a specific po mode should update it automatically.
  • If you use a normal text editor, you will have to do it manually.
Content Section
Do not change
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n"
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
but replace its older forms like
"CHARSET: UTF-8\n"
"ENCODING: 8bit\n"
with the recent form.
Plural-Forms
msginit should have set it properly. E.g. many slavian languages have complexer rules than English's
"Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=n != 1;\n"
See Gettext Manual: Translating Plural Forms for details.
See the full explanation in Gettext Manual: Header Entry.
  • Remove the `#, fuzzy' line once you have specified the items in capitals, because once this is done the header entry is no longer fuzzy.

Adjust special messages

  • There is currently one special string:
    #: gnucash/gnome-utils/gnc-main-window.c:4737
    msgid "translator-credits"
    msgstr ""
    "Christian Stimming, 2001-2021\n"
    :
    "Jan-Uwe Finck, 1999\n"
    "\n"
    "Anregungen, Kritik und Fragen zur Übersetzung an die\n"
    "deutschsprachige GnuCash-Gemeinschaft <gnucash-de@gnucash.org>\n"
    "Um die Moderation zu vermeiden, empfiehlt sich die Anmeldung auf der\n"
    "<a\
     href=\"https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-de\">Liste "
    "gnucash-de</a>"
    
This will appear in Help->About->Credits->Translation. So you should enter your name or that of your team and an email address where users can contact you for typos and gifts.
Tip
After some time more persons would have worked on the translation. Then you can expand it from your header comments to:
msgstr ""
"<current translator>, <years>\n"
"<previous translator>, <years>\n"
:
"<first translator>, <years>\n"
"\n"
"Send suggestions, critizism and questions about this translation to\n"
"Klingon speaking GnuCash community <gnucash-tlh@gnucash.org>\n."
"To avoid moderation we recommend to subscribe at\n"
"<a
# This comment exists only to trick the spamfilter. Rejoin the surrounding lines again.
 href=\"https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-tlh\">List gnucash-tlh</a>"
# Don't forget to replace Klingon (tlh) by your language and translate the rest!
If a list exists, we suggest to remove the email address of individuals for data protection reasons.

Prepopulate your file with translations from your glossary and other projects

The basic idea is decribed in Gettext Manual: Using Translation Compendia. Your translator tools might already support compendia. If not, i.e you are using a plain text editor, here is the manual way:

There are in total 3 programms in use:

msgcat
Concatenates and merges the specified PO files.
msgmerge
Merges two or more Uniforum style .po files together.
msgattrib
Filters the messages of a translation catalog according to their attributes or manipulates their attributes.
Example
To merge a compendiumn like our glossary:
cd ${SRCDIR}/po
# Gettext manual's suggestion to merge compendia without old po file:
msgmerge --compendium glossary/${LL}.po -o ${LL}.po /dev/null ${BUILDDIR}/po/gnucash.pot
# Perhaps better:
msgmerge -U ${LL}.po --compendium glossary/${LL}.po ${BUILDDIR}/po/gnucash.pot
GOffice

Gnucash has borrowed a couple of source files from goffice. Those files contain a number of translatable strings. The goffice translation teams have already put effort in translating those in many languages. To reduce our translation effort, the script linked in I18N#Borrowing Code can be used to import these translations into our own po files.

If the goffice part for your language is incomplete, you might consider to offer them to update their file with your work.

GTK3

Stock buttons became deprecated in their version 3.10. They included:

  1. a label with mnemonic,
  2. for which the translation was already done in the gtk domain,
  3. a unique icon was associated.

So they are no longer used since gnucash 3.0. We use still the same labels, but the GTK translation is not directly used.

You can save some work by merging the po file of your language from GTK3, i.e. from https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/tree/gtk-3-24/po into your gnucash po file.

Example
To merge fitting translations from GOffice and GTK:
#Example to merge common parts from po files in GOffice and GTK

# Variant A: in single steps to watch their results
## 1. join 3. party translations
msgcat --use-first -o tmp.po ${LL}.po ${GOFFICEPATH}/po/${LL}.po ${GTKPATH}/po/${LL}.po
## 2. Remove unused messages. Authoritativ is gnucash.pot:
msgmerge tmp.po ${BUILDDIR}/po/gnucash.pot | msgattrib --no-obsolete > {$LL}.po
rm tmp.po

# Variant B: in one command:
msgcat --use-first ${LL}.po ${GOFFICEPATH}/po/${LL}.po ${GTKPATH}/po/${LL}.po | \
msgmerge ${BUILDDIR}/po/gnucash.pot | \
msgattrib --no-obsolete > {$LL}.po

Adjust po/CMakeLists.txt

Also include your language code into the NEW_LINGUAS variable in the CMakeLists.txt file in the po folder of your source directory:
# Set of available languages:
set (ALL_LINGUAS ar as az bg brx ca cs da de doi el en_GB es es_NI et eu fa fi fr gu he hi hr hu id it ja kn ko kok kok@latin ks lt lv mai mni mni@bengali mr nb ne nl pl pt pt_BR ro rw sk sr sv ru ta te tr uk ur vi zh_CN zh_TW)

CMakeLists.txt is a file, which controls the configuration of the build process. So after changing it, you have to rerun cmake. Some IDEs like Eclipse will do it automagical for you.

As part of the build your LL.gmo file is generated in the po directory of your build tree. Finally make install will copy it to the place, where it will be found at runtime. If you forget one of the steps, your translated language will not appear.

Continue with #Translating the .po file.

Update an existing .po file

Before you begin actual translation work, you should update the gnucash.pot file and use this to update your .po file. This process will insure that you have the latest translatable strings.

If your language file already exists, update it using the msgmerge program. This will move the old translations of unchanged strings in the new file:
msgmerge --previous -U LL.po gnucash.pot
Note
If you had choosen a separate build directory, e.g. .build, adjust the path in above command:
cd ${SRCDIR}/po # adjust ${SRCDDIR}
export BUILDDIR=../build # adjust this
msgmerge --previous -U LL.po ${BUILDDIR}/po/gnucash.pot
Separate commits for "noise" and real work
You should now run git commit or create a patch "L10N:<locale>: Merge recent template".
This will contain only the "noise" from the updated pot file as usually many line numbers change.
Diff example after msgmerge
 #. Business options
-#: ../src/app-utils/app-utils.scm:303
-#: ../src/business/business-gnome/gncmod-business-gnome.c:117
+#: ../src/app-utils/app-utils.scm:322
+#: ../src/business/business-gnome/gncmod-business-gnome.c:119
 msgid "Business"
 msgstr "Geschäft"
Hiding your real changes in hundreds of such sections will make it really hard for your coworkers to find them.

After having done your translation you submit a second commit or patch containing your actual work "Update <locale>.po".

You should also do it, if your current translation tool uses other format settings like line breaks as the previous tool. In this case just open the file, save it and git commit or create a patch "L10N:<locale>: Preparation: Reformating".

Example in KBabel format
#: ../src/app-utils/business-prefs.scm:33
msgid "The format string to use for generating customer numbers. This is a printf-style format string."
msgstr "Используемая строка форматирования для создания номеров клиентов. Её формат соответствует printf."
Example in PoEDit format
#: ../src/app-utils/business-prefs.scm:33
msgid ""
"The format string to use for generating customer numbers. This is a printf-"
"style format string."
msgstr ""
"Используемая строка форматирования для создания номеров клиентов. Её формат "
"соответствует printf."
Review the file header
  • Project-Id-Version should be GnuCash 5.9 and
<tt>POT-Creation-Date should be recent. If they are not, you probably forgot #Get a fresh template or #Updating an existing .po file.
  • The PO-Revision-Date should be >= POT-Creation-Date.

Some, but not all tools will do this reliably for you.

Translating the .po file

Finally. You are ready to do some translating!

The .po source files are plain text files.

Tools

Some plain text editors offer a specific syntax highlighting for .po files, but there are also specific tools you can use:

  • Emacs has a po-mode to edit po files.
  • Geany, an editor with sytax highlighting and a little bit more
  • GTranslator is another tool but we recommend not to use it because the version of 2006 doesn't support all of the interesting elements inside the po file. Update this, if you know it is fixed.
  • Lokalize is the successor of KBabel since KDE4.
  • Poedit to finish the PO file edit and build.
Version 2.1.1 had issues

(feel free to add more tools here)

Gettext source (.po) file format

Record Format
A record in a po file has the following form:
<empty or only white-space>
#  translator-comments
#. extracted-comments
#: reference…
#, flag…
#| msgctxt previous-message-context
#| msgid previous-untranslated-string
msgctxt optional-message-context
msgid untranslated-string
msgstr translated-string
  • The empty or only white-space line is the record separator.
  • In translator-comments you can put your own notes.
  • The extracted-comments are notes from the programmers for you.
  • One or more references tell you, where the message appears in the sources.
  • The most important flags will be explained below in # Common Flags and source language format flag will be explained below.
  • The previous-* entries will only appear, after msgmerge --previous … for fuzzy messages to show what changed.
  • An optional-message-context has the purpose to distinguish equal msgids with different meanings.
  • The msg* should explain themself above.
Example
Here is an example of translating some text into German:
Before
#: messages-i18n.c:11
msgid ""
"The GnuCash personal finance manager.\n"
"The GNU way to manage your money!"
msgstr ""
After, the translation in the de.po file
#: messages-i18n.c:11
msgid ""
"The GnuCash personal finance manager.\n"
"The GNU way to manage your money!"
msgstr ""
"GnuCash: Ihr persoenlicher Finanzmanager.\n"
"Der GNU-Weg, ihr Geld zu verwalten!"

You should read through every translation in the .po file at least once.

Common Flags
Fuzzy Flag

If you see a string that has the phrase #, fuzzy in the flags comment above it, review the translation and confirm it by removing

  • the , fuzzy flag, but no other flags like , c-format,
  • the #| msgid lines, and in some cases
  • the #| msgctxt line.

A fuzzy translation means that the translation will be ignored by the program.

There are at least 2 reasons for the fuzzy flag:

  1. one of the msg* programs took some guess about what the translation might be from similar msgids,
  2. in a previous version you had a valid translation, but a programmer changed (parts of) the msgid.
After you finish translating, you should not have any "#, fuzzy" strings left. Remember, a string marked as "fuzzy" means it will not be translated in the program. You can filter for fuzzy messages by running
cd ${SOURCEDIR}/po
msgattrib --fuzzy ${YOUR_LANGUAGE}.po
Example fuzzy message
#: messages-i18n.c:35
#, fuzzy, c-format
#| msgid "There was an error opening the file %s."
msgid "There was an error writing the file %s."
msgstr "Es gab einen Fehler beim Oeffnen der Datei %s."
Here the msgid was changed from "opening" to "writing". You need to correct the translated string, remove the line(s) with the old msgid "#| msgid …" and the 'fuzzy' flag, because only then the translation will actually appear in the program.
Example fuzzy fixed
#: messages-i18n.c:35
#, c-format
msgid "There was an error writing the file %s."
msgstr "Es gab einen Fehler beim Schreiben der Datei %s."
Notice that #, c-format was not removed. That is correct, you should leave that.
Tip
If all fuzzy strings were fixed (msgattrib --fuzzy $LL.po returns nothing), you can also bulk remove the previous messages with
msgattrib --clear-previous -o $LL.po $LL.po
Format Flags

Because parts of GnuCash were written in different programming languages, there appear at least 2 different format flags:

c-format
Format specifier: %
When you see the comment "c-format", it means that the format codes in the translatable string are referring to C formatting codes. So, '%s' means text, '%d' means an integer, etc...
scheme-format
Format specifier: ~
Todo
Which parts of #Special_characters_and_other_tips would better stay here?
Orphaned Records
At the end of your file you might see records like
#~ msgid "Enter an Online Direct Debit Note"
#~ msgstr "Online-Lastschrift eingeben"

#~ msgid "Debited Account Number"
#~ msgstr "Konto-Nr. des Zahlungspflichtigen"

They have no reference line. This records are no longer in use and you can remove them.

Translate the strings

Each message to translate is then given in turn in the PO file. For example, an untranslated entry might be:
#: lib/error.c:88
msgid "Unknown system error"
msgstr ""
The empty msgstr string has to be filled with the translation for the string shown after msgid. If you were a German speaker, say, the entry once translated might look like:
#: lib/error.c:88
msgid "Unknown system error"
msgstr "Unbekannter Systemfehler"

You just produce a translation for all entries in the PO file, one after another, respecting the overall file format and the quoting needed for special characters, when needed. Observation and intuition may allow you to grasp what the format should be; the precise rules for PO files are given in the GNU gettext manual. The msgfmt program is helpful for pinpointing formatting errors.

Contexts
Important
With Gnucash 3.7 the first 2 forms got replaced by #Message Context. The description of the old types is only kept for some time to help updating older catalogs.

At some places, GnuCash uses "disambiguation prefixes" in translatable strings. Here is an old explanation: https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2005-October/014236.html ; more explanation is also here: https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeI18nDeveloperTips.

There are at least 2 use cases:

  • Abbreviations, i.e. for columns and their headers:
    msgid "Reconciled"
    msgstr "Abgeglichen"
    :
    msgid "Reconciled:R"
    msgstr "Reconciled:A"
    
  • Sample text to determinate the size of the output cell. Instead of a translation the "worst case" of expected text in your language is required here.
For the following example the german tranlators copied the longest path of account names from their business account templates as shown in the accounts tab of Gnucash:
msgid "sample:Expenses:Automobile:Gasoline"
msgstr "sample:Aufwendungen 2/4:Reparatur/Instandhaltung:4805 Reparatur u. Instandh. von Anlagen/Maschinen u. Betriebs- u. Geschäftsausst."
Important
Keep the part before the colon untranslated.
Another form - without need to insert the prefix - was
#. Translators: This string has a context prefix; the translation
#. must only contain the part after the | character.
#: gnucash/gnome-utils/dialog-options.c:722
#: gnucash/gnome-utils/gnc-tree-view-account.c:908
msgid "Column letter for 'Placeholder'|P"
msgstr "P"
and became
#: gnucash/gnome-utils/dialog-options.c:719
#: gnucash/gnome-utils/gnc-tree-view-account.c:906
msgctxt "Column header for 'Placeholder'"
msgid "P"
msgstr "P"
Tip
A tool like kdiff3 can help you to recover your previous translation.
Message Context
In more recently written parts we use a message context:
#: libgnucash/app-utils/gnc-ui-util.c:903
msgctxt "Reconciled flag 'not cleared'"
msgid "n"
msgstr ""
Special characters and other tips

Depending on the context a few characters have a special meaning and need some special treatment:

"#" (hash)
In English it is often used as abbreviation for "Number". You should replace it by "No.", "Nr." or whatever is common in your language.
"_" (underline)
In menu and dialog entries the following character will become the accelerator, mnemonic or hotkey, which can be used together with a superkey ctrl or alt to jump to the entry. While in GTK2 they have always been visible, in GTK3 they appear only after holding the superkey. More specific under Linux you reach a main menu entry with alt+<key> and its submenus and other menu entries with <key>. In dialogs always use alt+<key>.
The terminology is not unique here: while
msgfmt has a --check-accelerator option and
DocBook uses the <accel> tag for a letter used with a meta key and <shortcut> for a key combination, but
GTK+ distinguishes the underline marked character of the label as mnemonic and the hotkeys like F1 for Help or ctrl+c for Copy as accelerator.
So the key should
  1. exist on a keybord for your language.
  2. be easy to remember for your users,
  3. be unique in its context and you should control it by #Running GnuCash with your file after #Compile & Install. See also Access Keys in Gnome's HIG about keyboard input.
wrong:
"do _this" # Hotkey: t
"do _that" # Hotkey: t => not directly reachable
"do th_is" # Hotkey: i => thin letter, underline becomes invisible
right:
"do thi_s" # Hotkey: s
"do th_at" # Hotkey: a
That is one of the reasons why you should run the program with your translation: to see duplicate accelerators.
Characters to avoid
In dialogs some are already used on buttons like in English: Close, Help. Others depend on the context.
Thin letters like lowercase i or l, because the underline is to short.
Characters breaking the baseline like in latin script: j,p,q,y. At least in some fonts the underline becomes invisible - leaving the user clueless.
It is not required to use the same key as in English, Example from de.po:
#: gnucash/gnome-utils/gnc-main-window.c:273
msgid "_File"
msgstr "_Datei"
Languages are just different.
In Weblate
Compare https://hosted.weblate.org/browse/gnucash/gnucash/$LANGUAGE/?offset=1&q=_&sort_by=source&checksum=, but replace $LANGUAGE by your language code.
"\" (backslash)
It is the escape character in many programming languags. The following character has a special meaning like e.g.:
"\n" (New line)
The most often used special character in our strings. If msgid contains "\n" keep the layout and add them to msgstr too - at the same places.
"some \"quoted\" text"
Because " terminates the messages, you must precede it by a backslash inside of the messages or use other quoting characters like:
  • "some 'quoted' text"
  • "some »quoted« text"
  • "some „quoted” text"
You are free to use the conventions which are common or suggested in your language, but stay consistent. For that purpose you should add a translator comment about the convention at the beginning of the file for better cooperation.
Use "\\" to print a backslash.
"%" (percent)
In C based programming languages "%" marks the beginning of a format specifier, e.g. "%d6" means insert the next variable here in decimal format with 6 digits. Such format specifiers should be copied into your translated message, at the appropriate spot for your language, see https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/release/doc/html/date_time/date_time_io.html#date_time.format_flags Boost's list of format flags for date and time].
Non-ASCII digits
As a special feature for Farsi (Persian) and maybe Arabic, translators can insert an ‘I’ flag into numeric format directives. For example, the translation of "%d" can be "%Id". The effect of this flag, on systems with GNU libc, is that in the output, the ASCII digits are replaced with the ‘outdigits’ defined in the LC_CTYPE locale category. On other systems, the gettext function removes this flag, so that it has no effect.
Note
If a string is marked with c-format and has a % mark that does not start a format specifier, file a bugreport and tell the developers the location of the string (the lines above the msgid). The developers should fix this in the code. One way to do so is to insert a comment containing xgettext:no-c-format before the gettext call.
In order to continue without having to wait for the developers' fix to propagate you can remove the c-format flag from the #, comment line above. If no other flags are in the line, simply remove the line.
  • To output "%" if a string contains format specifiers, use "%%" in your string.
Reordering parameters
Assume a string "In %d cases the result will be %d.", but in your language you would prefer to write "%d will be the result in %d cases." Now you would get the wrong numbers.
Solution
Insert the ordinal number of the parameter, followed by "$" in the format specifier: "%2$d will be the result in %1$d cases.".
"~" (tilde)
like "%", but for scheme-format. The basic scheme-format uses ~a or ~s to format subsequent variables within code and should be copied in the translated message, in the same order. Guile's (ice-9 format)[2] does reordering with the ~@* and ~#* arguments, but it's a bit tricky to use:
(format #t "~@*1~a's ~@* from ~@*2~a to ~a" "Balance Sheet" "Yoyodyne Pty" "1 Oct 2018" "30 Sept 2019")
would print
Yoyodyne Pty's Balance Sheet from 1 Oct 2018 to 30 Sept 2019
Note
~a will insert a contents using "human readable" (display var) whereas ~s will insert contents using (write var). This is an important difference which means ~a and ~s cannot be interchanged.[3]
"{num,optional other specifiers}"
this is a format specifier for C++ code. You cat either copy it verbatim somewhere in your translated message or you may adapt it to your language.
"$" (Dollar)
Since 2023 there is another format specifier: ${parameter-name}.
Example
(gnc:format "${start} to ${end}" 'start "1 Oct 2018" 'end "30 Sept 2019")
will print
1 Oct 2018 to 30 Sept 2019
[4]
"&" (ampersand)
is the starting character of HTML encoding, which is used in some reports. E.g.
&nbsp;
means NonBreakableSpace.
"<" (less)
is the starting charcter of tags in several markup languages. E.g.
<b>Text</b>
results in bold Text.
See also
GUI Guidelines is the related programmers view.
Almost Done
If you are almost done it becomes harder to find the last untranslated messages. Then you can use
msgattrib --untranslated ${LL}.po
and then search your file for the content of the msgid.

Check syntax and statistics of your .po file

Required
msgfmt -c --statistics ${LL}.po

If that program reports one or more fatal errors for your language, you should review the criticized lines of your file.

Tip
A successful call will create a file messages.mo. If you are not using a build environment, you can move that file to
Linux
${PREFIX}/share/locale/${LL}/LC_MESSAGES/gnucash.mo
and restart gnucash to test the program with your translation.
Desired
In a second run you might wish to see, where you forgot to add an accelerator:
msgfmt -c --check-accelerators="_" --statistics ${LL}.po

The users will love you if you fix them, too.

Current status

To see some over all statistics how many strings are translated, you can run

for i in *.po; do echo -n "$i:"; msgfmt -c --statistics $i;done

in your po directory.

Priority

As you might have noticed, the po file for GnuCash is rather big by containing more than 4000 strings. It is somewhat helpful to look into different priorities for the different strings there. However, unfortunately the po file format doesn't enable any easy way for the GnuCash project to make the import strings differently from the less important ones. However, for a few files the developer team can give you some guidelines for the general priorities.

The source code location aka ref[erence] of a string gives you some hint about its priority. In particular, the following file suffixes or file locations imply a certain priority:

  • High Priority: Strings from all *.glade files will be presented by the GnuCash user interface (UI) somewhere for the user. This may imply a somewhat higher priority to those strings - however, some UI elements are rarely used, so the actual location of the .glade file has an influence as well, but there isn't an easy rule for that anymore.
Tip
If you wish to see the string from a *.glade file in it's context, but don't know, where it is hidden in gnucash, if
  • the gnucash source files and
  • the Gnome's interface builder Glade
are installed on your system, you can preview them for instance with
LANG=C glade-previewer -f ${SOURCEDIR}/gnucash/gtkbuilder/${FILENAME}
[5]
  • Low Priority: Strings from all *.schemas.h files will not appear in the gnucash UI. Instead, they are shown only inside the
  • Linux: dconf-editor,
  • macOS: defaults or
  • Windows: regedit program when the user wants to set particular GSettings keys of GnuCash. You can safely consider the .schemas.h strings with lower priority than the others.
    • Register2 feature is a stalled developement. The strings are only visible, if you #configure --enable-register2. Some, but not all strings are marked with a "Register2 feature" comment.

Unfortunately, there is no such simple rule for strings from *.c files or the single large intl-scm/guile-string.c file. The strings from there may be of higher or lower priority, but this isn't easily visible. We can only recommend to start GnuCash on your own with your updated translation, and then check for strings which you see but are not yet translated. Those are for sure of high priority.

Two additional source code locations can be noted as low priority:

  • Everything from the file src/bin/gnucash-bin.c is of low priority because those are the command line options when running gnucash with different options from the command line. This is a use case that is performed only by highly experienced users which are accustomed to using the English-language command line commands. Therefore, translations here are of lower priority.
  • Everything from the folder src/tax or from the intl-scm/guile-string.c file with a comment indicating some file in src/reports/locale-specific is related to tax preparation in the U.S. or in Germany. Hence, those strings are uninteresting for anyone living in different countries, and you can safely consider those with very low priority.

Testing and submitting your translations

You must check that your new translations are programatically correct (ie:

that there are no unclosed quotes, etc). To do this, use the msgfmt program
msgfmt -c --statistics $LL.po

Above call will report most important errors in your .po file and must not fail, while the call below

msgfmt -c --check-accelerators="_" --statistics LL.po

whill additionally check if you missed some keyboard accellerators aka hotkeys.

Note for developers
Another python based tool is i18nspector - checking tool for gettext POT, PO and MO files. It is stricter and shows also warnings about expected entries which our .pot file is currently missing. That can be discussed e.g. in #Background.

If you want to see your translations within a running version of gnucash, simply place your .po file in the po/ directory of your local gnucash source repository (which you have previously installed) and a regenerate your message catalogs with:

cd ${BUILDIDR} # adjust to navigate to your build directory
make po-gmo

Now you can run gnucash with your new translations:

cd ${BUILDIDR} # adjust to navigate to your build directory
LANG=XXXX ./bin/gnucash

To review the schema strings you can use 'dconf-editor'

Alternative Way with Poedit

If you use Poedit while working on .po file, you would notice that it saves file in .mo format, the very format that GnuCash uses itself. So one would just need to copy this LL.mo file into appropriate subdirectory of your build directory:

cp ${LL}.mo ${BUILDDIR}/share/locale/${LL}/LC_MESSAGES/gnucash.mo # replace ${BUILDDIR} with the actual path to your build directory

The only thing that needs to be changed here is <LL> which stands for your language code (ka Georgian, de German etc). The rest is as in above method:

cd ${BUILDDIR}  # adjust to navigate to your build directory
LANG=$XXXX ./bin/gnucash

Submitting

just push your commit (Git#Pull Requests) or upload the Git#Patches of the files. There should be one commit/patch containing the noise as described in #Update an existing .po file and a second one containing your actual work.

Then follow #How to submit changes directly to GnuCash. See also https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2009-January/024700.html [FIXME: obsolete?]

Committers

msgid "translator-credits"
should contain at least the "Last-Translator:" from the header.
msgid "gnucash-icon"
do not translate, we have only one.
  • If the language is new
  • On committing add the name and email address of the last translator from the file as author, e.g.
     git commit --author="Lieutenant Worf <lt.worf@starfleet.org>" --message="L10N:tlh[: optional status or other details]
    
    4677 translated messages." # << The msgfmt statistics
    
  • If you check in a new language, remove a language or see the status of the language changes from partial to (almost) complete, update the numbers in <sect2 id="oview-featuresintl2"> in file guide/C/ch_oview.xml of gnucash-docs.

Problems

Gtk-CRITICAL messages

Note: Fixing this problem is quite difficult. We keep the explanation here in case some developers need it in the future, but if you have no idea what we are talking about in the next sentences, you should rather ignore these Gtk-CRITICAL messages and our explanation here!

If you see any "Gtk-CRITICAL" messages while running gnucash, it is probably because you translated a string differently than how it exists in some other gnome library. You must discover which string you translated differently, and change the translation to exactly match that of the gnome libraries.

To do this, you need to run gnucash under gdb:

cd ${BUILDIDR} # adjust to navigate to your build directory
LANG=§XXXX gdb ./bin/gnucash
Then, from within gdb, issue
run --g-fatal-warnings

Eventually, gnucash should crash (because of the --g-fatal-warnings

directive), when it does, issue from within gdb
backtrace
You should see some output that looks like
#0  0xffffe002 in ?? ()
#1  0x42028a73 in abort () from /lib/tls/libc.so.6
#2  0x4019d3d8 in g_logv () from /usr/lib/libglib-1.2.so.0
#3  0x4019d414 in g_log () from /usr/lib/libglib-1.2.so.0
#4  0x40500fdd in gtk_type_check_object_cast () from 
/usr/lib/libgtk-1.2.so.0
#5  0x407292e5 in gnc_mdi_tweak_menus (mc=0x825adb0) at gnc-mdi-utils.c:574
#6  0x40729d13 in gnc_mdi_child_changed_cb (mdi=0x8266fd8, prev_child=0x0,
     data=0x8265fd8) at gnc-mdi-utils.c:861

Notice position #5 which has "gnc_mdi_tweak_menus at gnc-mdi-utils.c:574"? Open that source file and find line 574:

573   widget = gnc_mdi_child_find_menu_item(mc, "_View/_Toolbar");
574   gtk_signal_handler_block_by_data(GTK_OBJECT(widget), info);

So, the problem is with the translation of "_View/_Toolbar". The "/" is a menu seperator, so you now know that the problem is with either the translation of "_View" or "_Toolbar". By switching to an English gnucash (LANG=C) and looking through your .po file, you should be able to find out the problem. Change the offending translation to whatever you see in the gnucash app. Remember that the translations must contain the proper underscores.

Watch File accesses

To follow gnucash as it access files
strace /opt/gnucash-git/bin/gnucash

Check Files in Repo gnucash's doc Directory

Note
The content of this directory got some cleanup by bug 797111.

In theory one could create localized man pages (<command>.<man-section>[.in]). But their content is almost the same as <command> --help, which are translated for gnucash and gnucash-cli.

Task
We should use gettext also in the perl modules.

Translating the GnuCash Manual and Guide

Moved to Documentation Translation.

How to translate the files containing the new account hierarchies

This section describes the actions needed to translate the files containing the new account hierarchies.

Preliminary Considerations

However, please take a moment to think about the intention of the account hierarchy templates. The intention of those files is much more language-related than any other of the files inside gnucash. A string-by-string translation is not the best thing to do here. Instead, you can and should find out an actual recommended account structure which makes sense in your language, and implement that one in your language. By this, I mean several of the english accounts make sense only in the U.S., but probably not in other countries. Hence, your translated account template should not contain them. Also, you can add additional parts of the account templates for your language as well, if the users are likely to need it.
For example, in the U.S., users are likely to own a car, and for this reason there is an account structure template for "Car". If in another hypothetical region users are likely to own, say, a spaceship instead of a car, you should remove the "Car" template and instead create a new account structure that represents all accounts related to the ownership of a spaceship, and offer this as additional "Spaceship" template.
In other words, you should feel free to create a completely new account template structure that is most suited to your language. The english-language templates are just a proposal, but will need further adaption and not a string-by-string translation.

Having said that, here is how you would start for a direct translation of the English templates:

In this section always replace <locale> with your language code and optional your region code, if there are multiple countries with the same language and your templates are fitting only to one of them.

Prerequisite

Initialize accounts/<locale>

  • If it does not already exists, execute the following steps to initialize your accounts/<locale> directory:
  1. Copy the directory accounts/C to accounts/<locale>.
    Tip
    If there is already a directory in your language, but for a different region you can instead also copy that.
  2. In the directory accounts/ change the file CMakeLists.txt and add your <locale> to both alphabetical sorted lists:
    1. add_subdirectory(C)
      :
      add_subdirectory(<locale>)
      :
      
    2. set(accounts_DIST ${C_DIST} ...  ${<locale>_DIST} ... ${dist_list} PARENT_SCOPE)
      
  3. In accounts/<locale>/CMakeLists.txt adjust the <locale>:
    :
    set_dist_list(<locale>_DIST ${dist_account_DATA} CMakeLists.txt)
    
    install(FILES ${dist_account_DATA} DESTINATION ${ACCOUNTS_INSTALL_DIR}/<locale>)
    file(COPY ${dist_account_DATA} DESTINATION ${ACCOUNTS_BUILD_DIR}/<locale>)
    
    Note
    The next 2 steps are are discussed in #Localize the Account Charts below.
  4. Localize acctchrt_full.gnucash-xea. This is only a helper file where you have all accounts in their context.
  5. Now create the real modules by merging the respective parts from acctchrt_full.gnucash-xe in the other acctchrt_*.gnucash-xea files.
  • If you remove or create new files, adjust in accounts/<locale>/CMakeLists.txt the list
    set(dist_account_DATA
      ...)
    
  • Whenever you changed one or more CMakeLists.txt files, you have to rerun
    cd ${SOURCEDIR}
    cmake <your options>
    cd ${BUILDDIR} # e.g. .build
    make # or ninja
    

Localize the Account Charts

Tip: C/acctchrt_full.gnucash-xea is a helper file. Because we prefer modularization it usually is not part of the distribution. It contains the full tree of the personal en_US accounts. The other acctchrt_*.gnucash-xea files contain single branches of that. So after translating it you can copy&paste the respective parts in the other files to ensure consistency between them.

If you modularize the templates you should start with acctchrt_common.gnucash-xea - it is the most basic.

For each desired acctchrt_* file in that directory:

  1. Change the gnc-act:title, gnc-act:short-description, and gnc-act:long-description to contain appropriately translated text. Do not add any newlines in the long description except at the end and begining of the string.
  2. For each gnc:account in the file
    1. translate the act:name, and act:description fields.
    2. Optionally you can
      1. assign an account number <act:code>1234</act:code> after <act:commodity-scu> or
      2. add a note as i.e. in
           <act:slots>
            <slot>
              <slot:key>hidden</slot:key>
              <slot:value type="string">true</slot:value>
            </slot>
            <slot>
              <slot:key>notes</slot:key>
              <slot:value type="string">Some additional text about the usage of this account</slot:value>
            </slot>
            <slot>
              <slot:key>placeholder</slot:key>
              <slot:value type="string">true</slot:value>
            </slot>
          </act:slots>
        
    Please do not translate any other fields or the internally used ROOT account.
  3. To avoid typos, run the Account Hierarchy Template#Syntax Check.
  4. New files to be shown to the user must be added to the account_DATA section,
    helper files like acctchrt_full.gnucash-xea to EXTRA_DIST in Makefile.am.

Note again: You absolutely don't need to translate all of the files from accounts/C. A subset of those are fine as well. Probably several of them will not apply to your local legislative/economic system anyway. For a really customized account hierarchy you might better create a new account hierarchy file in GnuCash, and then, by hand-editing the xml code, split it up into several files and cut&paste the appropriate tags from the accounts/C/acctchrt_* files.

If you wish to add new accounts manually, you will need some additional guids, those funny random numbers. To get them you can use:
uuidgen | sed -e 's/-//g'

or use an online uuid generator like this one (any other one will do as well). Be sure to untick "Hyphens" to generate gnucash compatible guids. If you forget or the site you use doesn't offer that option, simply remove the hyphens yourself.

Dependencies
uuidgen is in a package 'util-linux', sed has its own package.

Account Hierarchy Template describes, how to create new templates e.g. for business purpose according local rules.

Test your Work

To test your work under real conditions, you should finally Compile & Install it. But before you need an adjusted Makefile.am in your accounts/<locale> directory. If none exists, copy that from accounts/c and adjust it:

  • 1. Line (accountdir): adjust the locale.
  • If you removed accountcharts, remove their line from account_DATA,
  • if you added new files, insert lines with their names and "\" (the line continuation symbol).

How to create localized Income Tax Tables

Note
This section is under developement and mostly untested!

As of the beginning of 2015 there is a nice US tax module, with a report and export in TXF format, and a small German (de_DE) derivate for the monthly VAT declaration. You can compare them to see how you can tweak them to get something else.

Tax Table

Because it is also used by Edit->Tax Report Optionsit is part of the GnuCash library:

  1. Copy us into a new subfolder with the lowercased ISO code of your region.
    It contains the following files
    1. tax.scm - is only a linking element, where you have to replace us by your region twice.
    2. txf.scm - the tables, and
    3. txf-help.scm - the descriptive help strings for each TXF code. This is also used to get a table in gnucash-docs/help/
  2. They have relative simple table structures:
    (define txf-tax-entity-types
    
    contains a list of forms for different entities (person, company …).
    (define txf-income-categories 
    (define txf-expense-categories 
    
    contain for each of the above lists the entries. If you compare this file with the respective files in de, you can see an example localization with additional categories:
     (define txf-asset-categories 
     (define txf-liab-eq-categories 
    
    It should be possible to adapt the lists for your tax forms.

Report and Export

Probably you need to have other export reports. That are in https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/tree/stable/gnucash/report/reports/locale-specific/us like

  • txf-export.scm
  • us.scm is unused

Here you might probably need some help from a programmer.

How to translate the website

Note about OS
These instructions are written for linux. They will probably work on other unix-like systems as well, but not on Windows. On Windows you may be able to do this if you set up a linux-like environment (with cygwin or MinGW[-w64]), but that's untested so far. Please report your findings here.
  • Get a checkout of https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash-htdocs
  • Run the command
    make pot
    
  • Then depending on whether or not a translation for you language exists already (complete or not):
    Existing translation

    Run the command
    msgmerge --previous -U po/LL.po po/gnucash-htdocs.pot
    
    where LL is your language code, see #Naming Convention above.
    Alternative
    make msgmerge
    
    will update all .po files
    New translation

    In the po directory run
    As translator
    msginit
    
    This will insert your name, email and locale settings into the new file. If that fails copy the newly created file po/gnucash-htdocs.pot to po/LL.po, where LL is your language code, see #Build a new .po file earlier.
    As maintainer
    # Set LL=<language code>
    msginit --no-translator --locale=$LL
    
    This will create a new file $LL.po without personal data. Continue with #Maintainers Task.
  • Translate the po/LL.po file as described in #Translating the .po file.
    Priority
High
Startpage: {index|externals/*}.phtml
Low
sizing.phtml (outdated) search/templates/NMZ.* (unused)
Medium
the rest depends on you.
  • Run
    msgfmt -c --statistics po/LL.po
    
    to see your success.
  • Optionally run
    recode -d <input_encoding>..h0 po/LL.po
    
    to get special characters HTML quoted.
  • Send your LL.po either as
    • GitHub Pull Request or
    • attachment of a Bugzilla enhancement request to the mainteiner team.

Background

This section was started to get some overview, work in progress! Beyond it helped to get rid of the outdated #IntlTool in version 2.7.6. For details see the GetText Manual.

Packages

In our build process we use beneath self written scripts the following packages:

  • glib2-devel: glib-gettextize
  • gettext, probably broken in:
    • -runtime: msgfmt, ...
    • -tools: (autopoint), gettextize, msg*, xgettext, ...
    • -runtime-tools-doc: manuals etc.
  • (only up to 2.7.5) intltool: Intltool*

Our Build Process

This was the old (upto 2.6) autotools build process, which went through the following scripts:

autogen.sh
Note
Autotools were only used up to 2.6 branch. 2.7 and later use CMake instead.
glib-gettextize
helps to prepare a source package for being internationalized through gettext. It is a variant of the gettextize that ships with gettext.
glib-gettextize differs from gettextize in that it doesn't create an intl/ subdirectory and doesn't modify po/ChangeLog (note that newer versions of gettextize behave like this when called with the --no-changelog option).

»Note that on GNU systems, you don't need to link with libintl because the gettext library functions are already contained in GNU libc.« (glibc) [1].

configure.ac
  • Sets
ALL_LINGUAS= ...

In recent versions it can be substituted by LINGUAS files in the po directories. We should consider this to distinguish TP vs. GC maintained translations.

GETTEXT_PACKAGE=gnucash

This is intltool style. Gettext uses PACKAGE=...

AC_SUBST(GETTEXT_PACKAGE)
AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED(GETTEXT_PACKAGE, "$GETTEXT_PACKAGE",
   [GetText version number])

AM_GNU_GETTEXT_REQUIRE_VERSION|AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION(x.yy.zz) can be used to require a version. We should use it to avoid ...

  • TP expects > 0.11.
  • gnulib expects >= 0.17
  • RHEL7 offers 0.18.2 (RHEL6 0.17)
  • Debian Stable offers 0.18.1 and in backport 0.19.3
  • Glade2 msgctxt and Glade3 were implemented in 0.18.3 - July 2013
  • GSettings and Desktop entries are implemented in 0.19 - June 2014
  • and got bugfixes until Version 0.19.3 - October 2014
  • Scheme format strings got a fix in 0.19.4 - December 2014
  • AppData support: gettext-0.19.6 released - 2015-09
  •  ? custom XML formats in 0.19.7
<gjanssens> GtkUIManager files don't contain translatable strings as far as I know. They're not in POTFIILES.in either.

This setting then can be used by autoPoInt. Watch the caveaets from https://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/manual/html_node/gettextize-and-autopoint.html:

On the other hand, if your package is not as concerned with compliance to the latest standards, but instead favors development on stable environments, the steps are:
  1. Determine the oldest version of gettext that you intend to support during development (at this time, gnulib recommends going no older than version 0.17). Run autopoint (not gettextize) to copy infrastructure into place (newer versions of gettext will install the older infrastructure that you requested).
  2. Invoke gnulib-tool, and import the gettext-h module. # Fixme: Meaning?
Regardless of which approach you used to get the infrastructure in place, the following steps must then be used to preserve that infrastructure (gnulib’s bootstrap script follows these rules):
  1. When a script of yours run autopoint, invoke gnulib-tool afterwards.
  2. When you invoke autoreconf after gnulib-tool, make sure to not invoke autopoint a second time, by setting the AUTOPOINT environment variable, like this:
$ env AUTOPOINT=true autoreconf --install
AM_GLIB_GNU_GETTEXT          # FIXME: Meaning?
  • runs checks with settings
    • AC_PROG_INTLTOOL
    • AC_CHECK_HEADERS(ltdl.h, ...
dnl Make sure we have a proper gettext installed
AC_MSG_CHECKING(for a valid gettext/gmsgfmt installation)
if test "$gt_cv_have_gettext" != "yes" || test "x$GMSGFMT" = "x"; then
  AC_MSG_RESULT(no)
  AC_MSG_ERROR([Cannot find Glib Gettext.  Maybe you need to install the gettext package?])
else
  AC_MSG_RESULT(yes - $GMSGFMT)
fi
makefile.am

has the following section:

.PHONY: pot
pot: Makefile po/POTFILES.in
	rm -f po/$(PACKAGE).pot
	${MAKE} -C po $(PACKAGE).pot


$(srcdir)/po/POTFILES.in: make-gnucash-potfiles .potfiles
	if test -w $(srcdir)/po/POTFILES.in ; then ./make-gnucash-potfiles > $(srcdir)/po/POTFILES.in ; fi

# Creation rules so that po/gnucash.pot can always be created for
# make dist.
po/gnucash.pot: po/POTFILES.in
	${MAKE} -C po gnucash.pot

.potfiles:
make-gnucash-potfile.in

This is a self written perl script from the time as gettext had several issues. It creates po/potfiles.in, the "list of files which contain translatable strings". This script is not used in a cmake based build environment for gnucash. As gnucash 2.7.4 and more recent is cmake only, this file has been removed starting from that release.

xgettext
xgettext
Extract translatable strings from given input files. See --language for supported list:
--language=NAME
recognise the specified language (C, C++, ObjectiveC, PO, Shell, Python, Lisp, EmacsLisp, librep, Scheme, Smalltalk, Java, JavaProperties, C#, awk, YCP, Tcl, Perl, PHP, GCC-source, NXStringTable, RST, Glade, Lua, JavaScript, Vala, Desktop)
Options, which we should check:
--copyright-holder=STRING
set copyright holder in output
--foreign-user
omit FSF copyright in output for foreign user
--msgid-bugs-address=EMAIL@ADDRESS
set report address for msgid bugs
  1. Before version 5.0 stable was named maint and future master. Discussionand Announcement
  2. https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/html_node/Formatted-Output.html
  3. https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/html_node/Scheme-Write.html
  4. Bug 797725 - Untranslatable string "For Period Covering ~a to ~a"
  5. Without LANG=C you would see localized standard buttons, but for now you want to see everything in US English.