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d70283ce JL |
1 | Notes on GCC's Native Language Support |
2 | ||
d70283ce JL |
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 | ||
842eb2a3 | 7 | Not all of GCC's diagnostic messages have been internationalized. Programs |
bfb53001 ZW |
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. | |
d70283ce JL |
13 | |
14 | The GCC library should not contain any messages that need | |
842eb2a3 PT |
15 | internationalization, because it operates below the internationalization |
16 | library. | |
d70283ce | 17 | |
d70283ce JL |
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 | For example, the `error' function's first parameter is named `msgid'. | |
29 | GCC's exgettext script uses this convention to determine which | |
30 | function parameter strings need to be translated. The exgettext | |
31 | script also assumes that any occurrence of `%eMSGID}' on a source | |
32 | line, where MSGID does not contain `%' or `}', corresponds to a | |
33 | message MSGID that requires translation; this is needed to identify | |
34 | diagnostics in GCC spec strings. | |
35 | ||
146ef880 | 36 | If you modify source files, you'll need at least version 0.10.37 of the |
a71d3613 PT |
37 | GNU gettext package to propagate the modifications to the translation |
38 | tables. | |
842eb2a3 | 39 | |
a71d3613 PT |
40 | After having built and installed these gettext tools, you have to |
41 | configure GCC with --enable-maintainer-mode to get the master catalog | |
42 | rebuilt. |