Emacs localization (Re: Why emacs have not native language menu)

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

On 24 juil. 07, at 09:36, Nick Roberts wrote:

> > FWIW, there were discussions in the past on the Aquamacs list to work
> > on localizing the software but it was more the lack of specialists
> > than the sheer complexity of the task that aborted the discussions.
>
> I don't see how it could be any easier to add localization support to
> Aquamacs since it is just an adaption of Emacs.  The lack of  
> specialists
> presumably also implies that no-one could gauge the actual  
> complexity of
> the task.

I am not suggesting that it is easier with Aquamacs, only that we  
discussed similar issues there too.


> > Could anyone provide guidance here ?
>
> I'm not an expert but the strings used for menus are stored in many  
> different
> places.

Yes. I could see that myself. Indeed, all the strings are in the  
code. All the functions are documented in English in their code and  
to get a proper localization of that, or at least of a basic core  
features (like functions that available from the UI for a start)  
would require to remove all strings and put them in locale separated  
files that emacs would load based on the environment. Is that correct ?

Are there already existing systems that provide a way to do that  
relatively effortlessly (I am not talking about the translation  
effort, but about the string isolation effort of course) ?


Jean-Christophe Helary