PrusaSlicer-NonPlainar/doc/Localization_guide.md

# Localization and translation guide

The purpose of this guide is to describe how to contribute to the Slic3rPE translations. We use GNUgettext for extracting string resources from the project and PoEdit for editing translations.

Those can be downloaded here: 
-    https://sourceforge.net/directory/os:windows/?q=gnu+gettext GNUgettext package contains a set of tools to extract strings from the source code and to create the translation Catalog.
-    https://poedit.net PoEdit provides good interface for the translators.

After GNUgettext is installed, it is recommended to add the path to gettext/bin to PATH variable.

Full manual for GNUgettext can be seen here: http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html


### Scenario 1. How do I add a translation or fix an existing translation
1. Get PO-file from corresponding folder here:
https://github.com/prusa3d/Slic3r/tree/master/resources/localization
2. Open this file in PoEdit as "Edit a translation"
3. Apply your corrections to the translation
4. Push changed Slic3rPE.po and Slic3rPE.mo (will create automatically after saving of Slic3r.po in PoEdit) back to to the enter folder.

### Scenario 2. How do I add a new language support
1. Get file Slic3rPE.pot here :
https://github.com/prusa3d/Slic3r/tree/master/resources/localization
2. Open it in PoEdit for "Create new translation"
3. Select Translation Language (for example French).
4. As a result you will have fr.po - the file containing translation to French.
Notice. When the translation is complete you need to:
    - Rename the file to Slic3rPE.po
    - Click "Save file" button. Slic3rPE.mo will be created immediately
    - Both Slic3rPE.po and Slic3rPE.mo have to be saved here:
https://github.com/prusa3d/Slic3r/tree/master/resources/localization/fr
( name of folder "fr" means "French" - the translation language). 

### Scenario 3. How do I add a new text resource when implementing a feature to Slic3rPE
Each string resource in Slic3rPE available for translation needs to be explicitly marked using L() macro like this:
```C++
auto msg = L("This message to be localized")
```
To get translated text use one of needed macro/function (`_(s)`, `_CHB(s)` or `L_str(s)` ).
If you add new file resource, add it to the list of files containing macro `L()`

### Scenario 4. How do I use GNUgettext to localize my own application taking Slic3rPE as an example

1.  For convenience create a list of files with this macro `L(s)`. We have 
https://github.com/prusa3d/Slic3r/tree/master/resources/localization/list.txt.

2.  Create template file(*.POT) with GNUgettext command:
    ```
        xgettext --keyword=L --add-comments=TRN --from-code=UTF-8 --debug -o Slic3rPE.pot -f list.txt
    ```

    Use flag `--from-code=UTF-8` to specify that the source strings are in UTF-8 encoding
    Use flag `--debug` to correctly extract formatted strings(used %d, %s etc.)

3.  Create PO- and MO-files for your project as described above.

4.  To merge old PO-file with strings from created new POT-file use command:
    ```
        msgmerge -N -o new.po old.po new.pot
    ```
    Use option `-N` to not using fuzzy matching when an exact match is not found.

5.  To concatenate old PO-file with strings from new PO-file use command:
    ```
        msgcat -o new.po old.po
    ```

6.  Create an English translation catalog with command:
    ```    
        msgen -o new.po old.po
    ```
    Notice, in this Catalog it will be totally same strings for initial text and translated.

When you have Catalog to translation open POT or PO file in PoEdit and start to translation, 
it's very important to keep attention to every gaps and punctuation. Especially with 
formatted strings. (using %d, %s, etc.)