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1 | Notes on GCC's Native Language Support | |
2 | ||
3 | By and large, only diagnostic messages have been internationalized. | |
4 | Some work remains in other areas; for example, GCC does not yet allow | |
5 | non-ASCII letters in identifiers. | |
6 | ||
7 | Not all of GCC's diagnostic messages have been internationalized. Programs | |
8 | like `genattr' (in fact all gen* programs) are not internationalized, as | |
9 | their users are GCC maintainers who typically need to be able to read | |
10 | English anyway; internationalizing them would thus entail needless work for | |
11 | the human translators. Messages used for debugging, such as used in dumped | |
12 | tables, should also not be translated. | |
13 | ||
14 | The GCC library should not contain any messages that need | |
15 | internationalization, because it operates below the internationalization | |
16 | library. | |
17 | ||
18 | Unlike some other GNU programs, the GCC sources contain few instances | |
19 | of explicit translation calls like _("string"). Instead, the | |
20 | diagnostic printing routines automatically translate their arguments. | |
21 | For example, GCC source code should not contain calls like `error | |
22 | (_("unterminated comment"))'; it should contain calls like `error | |
23 | ("unterminated comment")' instead, as it is the `error' function's | |
24 | responsibility to translate the message before the user sees it. | |
25 | ||
26 | By convention, any function parameter in the GCC sources whose name | |
27 | ends in `msgid' is expected to be a message requiring translation. | |
28 | If the parameter name ends with `gmsgid', it is assumed to be a GCC | |
29 | diagnostics format string requiring translation, if it ends with | |
30 | `cmsgid', it is assumed to be a format string for `printf' family | |
31 | of functions, requiring a translation. | |
32 | For example, the `error' function's first parameter is named `gmsgid'. | |
33 | GCC's exgettext script uses this convention to determine which | |
34 | function parameter strings need to be translated. The exgettext | |
35 | script also assumes that any occurrence of `%eMSGID}' on a source | |
36 | line, where MSGID does not contain `%' or `}', corresponds to a | |
37 | message MSGID that requires translation; this is needed to identify | |
38 | diagnostics in GCC spec strings. | |
39 | The `G_(GMSGID)' macro defined in intl.h can be used to mark GCC diagnostics | |
40 | format strings as requiring translation, but other than that it is a | |
41 | no-op at runtime. | |
42 | ||
43 | If you modify source files, you'll need at least version 0.14.15 of the | |
44 | GNU gettext package to propagate the modifications to the translation | |
45 | tables. | |
46 | ||
47 | After having built and installed these gettext tools, you have to | |
48 | configure GCC with --enable-maintainer-mode to get the master catalog | |
49 | rebuilt. | |
50 | ||
51 | \f | |
52 | Copyright (C) 1998-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc. | |
53 | ||
54 | Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification, | |
55 | are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright | |
56 | notice and this notice are preserved. |