updated as of: April 1, 2015
last author: Andy Theuninck
The latest documentation can be found on the
Project Wiki.
The information below may be out of date.
In PHP
Using gettext in PHP is pretty simple. Instead of writing:
echo "I am awesome"
use on of the following:
echo gettext("I am awesome")
echo _("I am awesome")
I tend to use the underscore version. If the string hasn't been translated,
everything will still work fine. It'll just return exactly the input unmodified.
Creating / Managing Language Files
This is by no means the only method. Other tools exist for
editing these kind of files. Examples are command-line based, executed
from the pos/is4c-nf directory
First, we need a list of all the messages. This is normally in a .pot file.
Generate it like this:
find . -name '*.php' | xargs xgettext -L PHP -d pos-nf -o locale/pos-nf.pot --no-wrap -j
Try not to forget the -j option. That merges things so existing translations
in the .pot file are preserved. The .pot file is just a text file. Update the msgstr
values in it as needed.
Next, we need to translate the .pot file into a .po file. The command is this:
msgmerge -U locale/pos-nf_en_US.po locale/pos-nf.pot
Some programs can edit .po files directly.
Finally, we need to translate the .po file into a .mo file. The .mo is the
binary file that gettext actually uses to look up translations. The .po to .mo
command is this:
msgfmt -v -o locale/en_US/LC_MESSAGES/pos-nf.mo locale/pos-nf_en_US.po