Re: [Qemu-devel] Translation of strings in QEMU w/ gettext ?

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Tue, Jun 02, 2015 at 01:56:34PM +0100, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> In my work on TLS encryption, I've been blindly adding gettext markers
> around all error messages I raise. eg error_setg(errp, _("foo bar"));
> I've done this out of habit, since most apps I work on translate all
> strings that could end up visible by a user.
> 
> Looking again at existing QEMU codebase though, I notice that adding
> gettext _("...") markers is the exception, not the rule.
> 
> $ git grep  -l '_("'
> disas/alpha.c
> disas/arm.c
> disas/i386.c
> disas/m68k.c
> disas/mips.c
> disas/ppc.c
> disas/sparc.c
> scripts/dump-guest-memory.py
> tcg/s390/tcg-target.c
> tcg/sparc/tcg-target.h
> ui/gtk.c
> 
> Also, there are no .po file translations in QEMU source.

I'm being blind. There is a po/ directory of course :-) The questions
still stand though - should we be translating the rest of the source
beyond those files listed above.

> So I'm wondering if there is a long term vision / desire for translation
> in QEMU or not ?
> 
> In a number of cases libvirt includes the error message from QMP in the
> message we pass back up to the user. Any errors from libvirt are always
> translated, so if running libvirt in a non-en_US locale currently you
> will get a translated message from libvirt which includes a bit english
> text from QEMU.
> 
> Also, with the GTK ui frontend of QEMU now, you'll get some translation
> of the user interface menu options thanks to GTK built-in translations,
> but the rest are still english, which is not very satisfactory either.
> 
> Should we accept and/or encourage new patches to include translation
> markers, or should we explicitly say we're never going to translate any
> of QEMU and remove existing _("...") usage in the code ?
> 
> I've got a bunch of patches which add _("...") and want to know whether
> to remove them from my new code....

Regards,
Daniel
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