[PATCH xrandr 1/3] po4a: handle translated xrandr(1) manpage #37612

[Denis Barbier]

On 2011/5/29 Gaetan Nadon wrote:
> On Sat, 2011-05-28 at 23:56 +0200, Denis Barbier wrote:
[...]
>> That is true, gettext calls in po4a source code are only there to
>> display translated messages during po4a processing.
>
> Ah! You mean that po4a, like any well behaved mutlti language tool, will
> emit messages to user while it runs during the build process. The
> messages are fetched using gettext calls.

Exactly.

>>   The processing itself does not invoke gettext nor any external tool
>> (for the nroff backend, other backends may require external tools),
>> only perl is required.
>
> Unlike building C code which contains source code calling gettext, building
> man pages using po4a does not require the gettext build  infrastructure.
> Can I hazard a guess and claim that installing xrandr module on a system
> that does not have gettext, I would be able to read the French man page?

Right, but let me clarify.  With po4a, one can generate translated
manual pages.  Those are plain nroff formatted manual pages, which can
be displayed by the manual pager.  Usually translated manual pages are
installed into a separate file hierarchy; the manual pager first looks
for pages in a directory depending on user's locale, and if not found
in English ones.
The manual pager does not call gettext, it prints manual pages as it reads it.

Unfortunately there is no standardized location for translated manual
pages.  IMHO the simplest solution is to install xrandr.1 for language
xx into $MANDIR/xx/man1/xrandr.1, and distro packagers will take care
of installing translated manual pages at the right place in their
system.

Denis