1TRANSLATING VIM MESSAGES
2
3In this directory you will find xx.po files, where "xx" is a language code.
4Each file contains the translation of English Vim messages for one language.
5The files are in "po" format, used by the gettext package.  Please refer to
6the gettext documentation for more information.
7
8The GNU gettext library, starting with version 0.10.37, supports converting
9messages from one encoding to another.  This requires that it was compiled
10with HAVE_ICONV.  The result is that the messages may be in any encoding
11supported by iconv and will be automatically converted to the currently used
12encoding.
13
14The GNU gettext library, starting with version 0.10.36, uses a new format for
15some encodings.  This follows the C99 standard for strings.  It means that
16when a multi-byte character includes the 0x5c byte, this is not recognized as
17a backslash.  Since this format is incompatible with Solaris, Vim uses the old
18format.  This is done by setting the OLD_PO_FILE_OUTPUT and OLD_PO_FILE_INPUT
19environment variables.  When you use the Makefile in this directory that will
20be done for you.  This does NOT work with gettext 0.10.36.  Don't use it, get
210.10.37.
22
23
24ON MS-WINDOWS
25
26The distributed files are generated on Unix, but this should also be possible
27on MS-Windows.  Download the gettext packages, for example from:
28
29	http://sourceforge.net/projects/gettext
30
31You might have to do the commands manually.  Example:
32
33   cd c:\vim\vim71
34   mkdir runtime\lang\ja\LC_MESSAGES
35   msgfmt -o runtime\lang\ja\LC_MESSAGES\vim.mo src\po\ja.po
36
37
38WHEN THERE IS A MISTAKE
39
40If you find there is a mistake in one of the translations, please report this
41to the maintainer of the translation.  His/her E-mail address is in the
42comments at the start of the file.  You can also see this with the ":messages"
43command in Vim when the translation is being used.
44
45
46CREATING A NEW PO FILE
47
48We will use "xx.po" as an example here, replace "xx" with the name of your
49language.
50
51- Edit Makefile to add xx to LANGUAGES and xx.mo to MOFILES.
52- Copy the header of an existing file, e.g., de.po, to xx.po.  Do not copy any
53  of the translated messages, delete everything after the "msgstr".
54- The remaining work is like updating, see the next section.
55
56
57UPDATING A PO FILE
58
59If you are the maintainer of a .po file, this is how you update the file.  We
60will use "xx.po" as an example here, replace "xx" with the name of your
61language.
62
63(1) Add new and changed messages from the Vim sources:
64
65	make xx
66
67    This will extract all the strings from Vim and merge them in with the
68    existing translations.  Requires the GNU gettext utilities.  Also requires
69    unpacking the extra archive.
70    Your original xx.po file will be copied to xx.po.orig
71
72    -- After you do this, you MUST do the next three steps! --
73
74(2) Translate
75    See the gettext documentation on how to do this.  You can also find
76    examples in the other po files.
77    Search the po file for items that require translation:
78
79	/fuzzy\|^msgstr ""\(\n"\)\@!
80
81    Remove the "#, fuzzy" line after adding the translation.
82
83    There is one special message:
84	msgid "Messages maintainer: Bram Moolenaar <Bram@vim.org>"
85    You should include your name and E-mail address instead, for example:
86	msgstr "Berichten �bersetzt bei: John Doe <john@doe.org>"
87
88(3) Clean up
89    This is very important to make sure the translation works on all systems.
90    Comment-out all non-translated strings.  There are two types:
91    - items marked with "#, fuzzy"
92    - items with an empty msgstr
93    You can do this with the cleanup.vim script:
94
95	:source cleanup.vim
96
97    Background: on Solaris an empty msgstr results in an empty message; GNU
98    gettext ignores empty strings and items marked with "#, fuzzy".
99
100    This also removes the line numbers from the file, so that patches are not
101    messed up by changes in line numbers and show the actual changes in the
102    text.
103
104(4) Check:
105
106	vim -S check.vim xx.po
107	make xx.mo
108
109    Look out for syntax errors and fix them.
110