Gettext

KrzysieQ · 07-01-2009, 06:38 AM

Hi,
In Bash Script I have definition of GTK Window:

Code:

export MAIN_DIALOG='
<window title="Some title">
	<text>
		<label>"SOME TEXT HERE"</label>
	</text>
</window>
'

I would like to add the possibility of translation into other languages (Window title and text)

In source code it was simple - before any string I put '$'. For example: A=$"Some text" - but here (in GTK window definition) I have a little problem because I can't replace ' ' by " " in MAIN_DIALOG definition and ' ' isn't recognize by xgettext

catkin · 07-02-2009, 06:35 AM

Hello KrzysieQ

Quote:

Originally Posted by KrzysieQ

I can't replace ' ' by " " in MAIN_DIALOG definition and ' ' isn't recognize by xgettext

Can you give more information about what that means?

Best

Charles

David the H. · 07-02-2009, 07:32 AM

Assuming I understood your post correctly....

Quote marks in shell scripting are more like toggle switches than containers. You can use them to turn special character interpretation off and on, pretty much at will. So if you want to make the title text a variable you can do something like this:

Code:

$ TitleText="This is a title" LabelText="This is a label"

$ export MAIN_DIALOG='
<window title="'"$TitleText"'">    #note there's one double-quote "inside" the single quotes
<text>                             #and one "outside" them.  The ones inside will display
<label>'"$LabelText"'</label>      #literally in the output because they are "protected".
</text>
</window>
'

$ echo "$MAIN_DIALOG"
<window title="This is a title">
<text>
<label>This is a label</label>
</text>
</window>

The main thing to beware of is not to have any unquoted or unescaped spaces, tabs, or newlines in the string when setting the variable, or else the shell will interpret them as being the start of a new command.

BTW, I'm with catlan. What does xgettext have to do with this? Please explain it a bit more clearly.

David the H. · 07-02-2009, 08:00 AM

Actually, come to think of it, I think all you really have to do here is use double-quotes instead of single ones, then manually escape the double-quotes you want to output.

Code:

$ TitleText="This is a title" LabelText="This is a label"

$ export MAIN_DIALOG="
<window title=\"$TitleText\">
<text>
<label>$LabelText</label>
</text>
</window>
"

$ echo "$MAIN_DIALOG"
<window title="This is a title">
<text>
<label>This is a label</label>
</text>
</window>

FYI, double-quotes (") escape all characters except for $ \ and ` (dollar sign, backslash, and backquote). This way you can still use variables, command substitution, and escape sequences in your text string. Note that the single-quote is escaped while inside them, too.

Single-quotes ('), OTOH, make literal everything except another single-quote. You can't use any commands or variables, or escape anything, while inside them.

The ABSG section on quoting will give you more details.