Localization Scilab / Scipad

[Enrico Segre]

> At the moment, Scipad and Scilab don't
> use the same procedure for localization. As a matter of uniformisation
> and simplification, it would be great if Scipad could switch to
> gettext. 
> Basically, this involves to:
> 	- change the call to the localization process (basically gettext)

after a quick look, probably what you're asking us is quite painless. We
do not need to recode anything in scipad, which will continue to use
msgcat, which is THE way of localizing tcl code. What you'll be happy
for us to do is to switch to .po master message files, whereas .msg
files will be automatically compiled from them. I'm under the impression
( http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html ) that gnu
provides a host of gettext utilities for transcompilation of message
catalogues.
For instance the command

 xgettext -i --language=Tcl -a -o XX.po XX.msg

should produce the po file from the existing .msg. I can't exactly make
it work, but that is details.
If things are like that, what we'll need to rewrite are only the
translator instructions (like pointing potential translators to
launchpad instead of making long explanations about our way of
organizing msg files).
The first one who succeeds in finding the right commands for converting
po <-> msg tells everybody.

Enrico