Re: [Libreoffice] Gettext patch

On Tue, 2011-06-21 at 13:13 +0200, Andras Timar wrote:
> >        Instead of calling textdomain - since (I suspect) we can probably call
> > lots of these resource mgrs in quick succession - eg. initializing an
> > sw/ widget derived from sfx2/ from vcl/ - I suggest we drop the
> > textdomain() call - and store a const char *pDomain; that is a UTF8 copy
> > of aPrefix (on InternalResMgr if I see right).
>
> As far I can tell from the OSL_TRACE messages, textdomain() is called
> only once for each resource domain. I think resources are read when
> needed and they are stored in memory until application closes.

        textdomain sets some sort of global variable (last I looked) which
subsequent gettext calls then work from. That shouldn't work well in
LibreOffice's case where we need to multiplex lots of catalogs at speed;
I strongly recommend dgettext :-)

> Oh, yes, let's discuss this now because it affects design. I think
> Bjoern was thinking about Linux only so they could release translation
> updates for LibreOffice in Ubuntu without rebuilding the source.

        Which makes lots of sense for translators.

> I thought it was a multi platform feature because all platforms could
> benefit from separation of localization and building.

        Well - we still need to build the english resource files, and then load
and lookup the strings (as english) and then do the gettext-iness on
them, so this is going to be rather slow I suspect. The .po files are
also rather bigger than the .res files I think - since they need both
english and translated strings in them. So this is not clear to me; lets
discuss it at the next TSC meeting.

> >        Clearly we want to special case it only for the case
> > that there is no native translation.
>
> What do you mean by that? Fallback to gettext when no native resources
> are installed? Yes, this way we can add a language to an existing
> installation. Is that worth the effort?

        Right.

> Everywhere means 2 libs only: tl and the other one which
> processes .xcd files.

        But you forget how evil cut+paste coding is; it is the moral equivalent
of eating your children ;-)

        ATB,

                Michael.

-- 
 michael.meeks@novell.com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot