There are some works which are required for using GNU gettext
in one of your package. These works have some kind of generality
that escape the point by point descriptions used in the remainder
of this chapter. So, we describe them here.
m4
, GNU Autoconf and GNU
gettext
are already installed at your site, and if not, proceed
to do this first. If you got to install these things, beware that
GNU m4
must be fully installed before GNU Autoconf is even
configured.
Those three packages are only needed to you, as a maintainer; the
installers of your own package and end users do not really need any
of GNU m4
, GNU Autoconf or GNU gettext
for successfully
installing and running your package, with messages properly translated.
But this is not completely true if you provide internationalized
shell scripts within your own package: GNU gettext
shall
then be installed at the user site if the end users want to see the
translation of shell script messages.
It is worth adding here a few words about how the maintainer should ideally behave with PO files submissions. As a maintainer, your role is to authentify the origin of the submission as being the representative of the appropriate GNU translating team (forward the submission to `gnu-translation@prep.ai.mit.edu' in case of doubt), to ensure that the PO file format is not severely broken and does not prevent successful installation, and for the rest, to merely to put these PO files in `po/' for distribution.
As a maintainer, you do not have to take on your shoulders the responsibility of checking if the translations are adequate or complete, and should avoid diving into linguistic matters. Translation teams drive themselves and are fully responsible of their linguistic choices for GNU. Keep in mind that translator teams are not driven by maintainers. You can help by carefully redirecting all communications and reports from users about linguistic matters to the appropriate translation team, or explain users how to reach or join their team. The simplest might be to send them the `NLS' file.
Maintainers should never ever apply PO file bug reports themselves, short-cutting translation teams. If some translator has difficulty to get some of her points through her team, it should not be an issue for her to directly negotiate translations with maintainers. Teams ought to settle their problems themselves, if any. If you, as a maintainer, ever think there is a real problem with a team, please never try to solve a team's problem on your own.
Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.