Re: Localization

[Jonathan Gapen]

Nicola Pero wrote:
> Ah ah - alarm bell - `rather silly' ? - nobody is forcing you to use it.
> Don't use it if you don't like it.  It's just a trivial macro,

    Yes, that's true, but does it have to be part of GNUstep?  I took a
look at gettext and found that it uses the _() macro, too.  That makes
me like having it in GNUstep even less.  Not only does it break with
OpenStep/MacOS X, it could also mess with gettext.

> About the necessity of comments, I don't agree.

    Well, NSLocalizedString() doesn't require a comment.  :-)
 
> >    * NSLocalizedStaticString(), and __(): No comment.  The utility of
> > these functions escapes me.
> 
> Ok - take for example GSTest.
> 
> There is a list of bundles - each bundle contains a test.  This list is
> displayed in a submenu.  Now the list is contained in a file, testList.h.
> Code in another file loads the list - which is a statically allocated
> array - and builds the menu from the list.  For each entry, it reads from
> [...]
> How do I translate this ?
> 
> The answer is - pure openstep can't do that - but gettext can.

    I believe there's a pure OpenStep way to do it:  Make your test list
a property list inside the app bundle, instead of a statically-allocated
array.  That way, not only can you localize the property list, you can
vary the list of tests without even touching the program source code.
    OpenStep provides plenty of ways to utilize resources external to
the program to dynamically alter the way an application works.  It does
not appear to me that a need for such a macro arises all that often in
OpenStep programs.

-- 
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