[GNUe-dev] Proposal for i18n handling of .gfd files

[kilo]

Proposal for i18n handling of GNUe form descriptor files (.gfd)

In the layout section of a .gfd file each entry has unique names. Based
on this unique name, a simple runtime translation can happen.
Prerequisites:
    -a gnue.conf setting in the [forms] section, specifying the needed
translation language's ISO 639-1 or 639-2 code, eg. "translateForms=hu".
    -a translation file in the same directory where the original .gfd
file resides, with the extension of the language ISO code, eg. "intro.hu"
     -This translation file holds string pairs, following the format:
layoutEntryName=translatedString, eg "Label_5=Neved:"
    
The ideal place for this translation would be in the form Parser. If it
finds a 'translateForms' setting in gnue.conf, it opens the given
translation file (if it exists). As it reads along the .gfd file,
especially the layout section, it simply changes the text attribute's
value to the one mapped from the translation file.
It is the translator's responsibility to match the length of translated
strings to the original ones.

This way we can achieve that standard, pre-developped forms can be
localised easily, so that code reuse can be easier (think of
GNUe-Packages). They can also be used in multi-language environments,
where different translations can exist beside each other, and it would
be only a matter of changing a configuration setting to use the form in
an other language.

Please comment

kilo
Gabor Kmetyko