summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/extlib/php-gettext/README
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorEvan Prodromou <evan@controlyourself.ca>2009-08-27 07:56:19 -0700
committerEvan Prodromou <evan@controlyourself.ca>2009-08-27 07:56:19 -0700
commitf1fda6c0503e32edfc99b297f4bf2cb07e629d9e (patch)
tree4190903afb80c20b7e98c95e6ea8d57ced0695d9 /extlib/php-gettext/README
parent209486d3be877d85b3e241797e6042283d0f66d6 (diff)
parentfd53fba114283935a304ed2e05111da256ae798f (diff)
Merge branch '0.8.x' into 0.9.x
Diffstat (limited to 'extlib/php-gettext/README')
-rw-r--r--extlib/php-gettext/README189
1 files changed, 189 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/extlib/php-gettext/README b/extlib/php-gettext/README
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..c7525e29c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/extlib/php-gettext/README
@@ -0,0 +1,189 @@
+PHP-gettext 1.0
+
+Copyright 2003, 2006 -- Danilo "angry with PHP[1]" Segan
+Licensed under GPLv2 (or any later version, see COPYING)
+
+[1] PHP is actually cyrillic, and translates roughly to
+ "works-doesn't-work" (UTF-8: Ради-Не-Ради)
+
+
+Introduction
+
+ How many times did you look for a good translation tool, and
+ found out that gettext is best for the job? Many times.
+
+ How many times did you try to use gettext in PHP, but failed
+ miserably, because either your hosting provider didn't support
+ it, or the server didn't have adequate locale? Many times.
+
+ Well, this is a solution to your needs. It allows using gettext
+ tools for managing translations, yet it doesn't require gettext
+ library at all. It parses generated MO files directly, and thus
+ might be a bit slower than the (maybe provided) gettext library.
+
+ PHP-gettext is a simple reader for GNU gettext MO files. Those
+ are binary containers for translations, produced by GNU msgfmt.
+
+Why?
+
+ I got used to having gettext work even without gettext
+ library. It's there in my favourite language Python, so I was
+ surprised that I couldn't find it in PHP. I even Googled for it,
+ but to no avail.
+
+ So, I said, what the heck, I'm going to write it for this
+ disguisting language of PHP, because I'm often constrained to it.
+
+Features
+
+ o Support for simple translations
+ Just define a simple alias for translate() function (suggested
+ use of _() or gettext(); see provided example).
+
+ o Support for ngettext calls (plural forms, see a note under bugs)
+ You may also use plural forms. Translations in MO files need to
+ provide this, and they must also provide "plural-forms" header.
+ Please see 'info gettext' for more details.
+
+ o Support for reading straight files, or strings (!!!)
+ Since I can imagine many different backends for reading in the MO
+ file data, I used imaginary abstract class StreamReader to do all
+ the input (check streams.php). For your convenience, I've already
+ provided two classes for reading files: FileReader and
+ StringReader (CachedFileReader is a combination of the two: it
+ loads entire file contents into a string, and then works on that).
+ See example below for usage. You can for instance use StringReader
+ when you read in data from a database, or you can create your own
+ derivative of StreamReader for anything you like.
+
+
+Bugs
+
+ Plural-forms field in MO header (translation for empty string,
+ i.e. "") is treated according to PHP syntactic rules (it's
+ eval()ed). Since these should actually follow C syntax, there are
+ some problems.
+
+ For instance, I'm used to using this:
+ Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; plural=n%10==1 && n%100!=11 ? 0 : \
+ n%10>=2 && n%10<=4 && (n%100<10 || n%100>=20) ? 1 : 2;
+ but it fails with PHP (it sets $plural=2 instead of 0 for $n==1).
+
+ The fix is usually simple, but I'm lazy to go into the details of
+ PHP operator precedence, and maybe try to fix it. In here, I had
+ to put everything after the first ':' in parenthesis:
+ Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; plural=n%10==1 && n%100!=11 ? 0 : \
+ (n%10>=2 && n%10<=4 && (n%100<10 || n%100>=20) ? 1 : 2);
+ That works, and I'm satisfied.
+
+ Besides this one, there are probably a bunch of other bugs, since
+ I hate PHP (did I mention it already? no? strange), and don't
+ know it very well. So, feel free to fix any of those and report
+ them back to me at <danilo@kvota.net>.
+
+Usage
+
+ Put files streams.php and gettext.php somewhere you can load them
+ from, and require 'em in where you want to use them.
+
+ Then, create one 'stream reader' (a class that provides functions
+ like read(), seekto(), currentpos() and length()) which will
+ provide data for the 'gettext_reader', with eg.
+ $streamer = new FileStream('data.mo');
+
+ Then, use that as a parameter to gettext_reader constructor:
+ $wohoo = new gettext_reader($streamer);
+
+ If you want to disable pre-loading of entire message catalog in
+ memory (if, for example, you have a multi-thousand message catalog
+ which you'll use only occasionally), use "false" for second
+ parameter to gettext_reader constructor:
+ $wohoo = new gettext_reader($streamer, false);
+
+ From now on, you have all the benefits of gettext data at your
+ disposal, so may run:
+ print $wohoo->translate("This is a test");
+ print $wohoo->ngettext("%d bird", "%d birds", $birds);
+
+ You might need to pass parameter "-k" to xgettext to make it
+ extract all the strings. In above example, try with
+ xgettext -ktranslate -kngettext:1,2 file.php
+ what should create messages.po which contains two messages for
+ translation.
+
+ I suggest creating simple aliases for these functions (see
+ example/pigs.php for how do I do it, which means it's probably a
+ bad way).
+
+
+Usage with gettext.inc (standard gettext interfaces emulation)
+
+ Check example in examples/pig_dropin.php, basically you include
+ gettext.inc and use all the standard gettext interfaces as
+ documented on:
+
+ http://www.php.net/gettext
+
+ The only catch is that you can check return value of setlocale()
+ to see if your locale is system supported or not.
+
+
+Example
+
+ See in examples/ subdirectory. There are a couple of files.
+ pigs.php is an example, serbian.po is a translation to Serbian
+ language, and serbian.mo is generated with
+ msgfmt -o serbian.mo serbian.po
+ There is also simple "update" script that can be used to generate
+ POT file and to update the translation using msgmerge.
+
+Interesting TODO:
+
+ o Try to parse "plural-forms" header field, and to follow C syntax
+ rules. This won't be easy.
+
+Boring TODO:
+
+ o Learn PHP and fix bugs, slowness and other stuff resulting from
+ my lack of knowledge (but *maybe*, it's not my knowledge that is
+ bad, but PHP itself ;-).
+
+ (This is mostly done thanks to Nico Kaiser.)
+
+ o Try to use hash tables in MO files: with pre-loading, would it
+ be useful at all?
+
+Never-asked-questions:
+
+ o Why did you mark this as version 1.0 when this is the first code
+ release?
+
+ Well, it's quite simple. I consider that the first released thing
+ should be labeled "version 1" (first, right?). Zero is there to
+ indicate that there's zero improvement and/or change compared to
+ "version 1".
+
+ I plan to use version numbers 1.0.* for small bugfixes, and to
+ release 1.1 as "first stable release of version 1".
+
+ This may trick someone that this is actually useful software, but
+ as with any other free software, I take NO RESPONSIBILITY for
+ creating such a masterpiece that will smoke crack, trash your
+ hard disk, and make lasers in your CD device dance to the tune of
+ Mozart's 40th Symphony (there is one like that, right?).
+
+ o Can I...?
+
+ Yes, you can. This is free software (as in freedom, free speech),
+ and you might do whatever you wish with it, provided you do not
+ limit freedom of others (GPL).
+
+ I'm considering licensing this under LGPL, but I *do* want
+ *every* PHP-gettext user to contribute and respect ideas of free
+ software, so don't count on it happening anytime soon.
+
+ I'm sorry that I'm taking away your freedom of taking others'
+ freedom away, but I believe that's neglible as compared to what
+ freedoms you could take away. ;-)
+
+ Uhm, whatever.