NAME
Locale::Po4a::TransTractor - Generic trans(lator ex)tractor.
DESCRIPTION
The po4a (po for anything) project goal is to ease translations (and
more interestingly, the maintenance of translations) using gettext
tools on areas where they were not expected like documentation.
This class is the ancestor of every po4a parsers used to parse a
document to search translatable strings, extract them to a po file and
replace them by their translation in the output document.
More formally, it takes the following arguments as input:
- a document to translate ;
- a po file containing the translations to use.
As output, it produces:
- another po file, resulting of the extraction of translatable strings
from the input document ;
- a translated document, with the same structure than the one in input,
but with all translatable strings replaced with the translations
found in the po file provided in input.
Here is a graphical representation of this:
Input document --\ /---> Output document
\ / (translated)
+-> parse() function -----+
/ \
Input po --------/ \---> Output po
(extracted)
FUNCTIONS YOUR PARSER SHOULD OVERRIDE
parse()
This is where all the work takes place: the parsing of input
documents, the generation of output, and the extraction of the
translatable strings. This is pretty simple using the provided
functions presented in the section "INTERNAL FUNCTIONS" below. See
also the synopsis, which present an example.
This function is called by the process() function bellow, but if
you choose to use the new() function, and to add content manually
to your document, you will have to call this function yourself.
docheader()
This function returns the header we should add to the produced
document, quoted properly to be a comment in the target language.
See the section "Educating developers about translations", from
po4a(7), for what it is good for.
SYNOPSIS
The following example parses a list of paragraphs beginning with "<p>".
For the sake of simplicity, we assume that the document is well
formatted, i.e. that '<p>' tags are the only tags present, and that
this tag is at the very beginning of each paragraph.
sub parse {
my $self = shift;
PARAGRAPH: while (1) {
my ($paragraph,$pararef)=("","");
my $first=1;
my ($line,$lref)=$self->shiftline();
while (defined($line)) {
if ($line =~ m/<p>/ && !$first--; ) {
# Not the first time we see <p>.
# Reput the current line in input,
# and put the built paragraph to output
$self->unshiftline($line,$lref);
# Now that the document is formed, translate it:
# - Remove the leading tag
$paragraph =~ s/^<p>//s;
# - push to output the leading tag (untranslated) and the
# rest of the paragraph (translated)
$self->pushline( "<p>"
. $document->translate($paragraph,$pararef)
);
next PARAGRAPH;
} else {
# Append to the paragraph
$paragraph .= $line;
$pararef = $lref unless(length($pararef));
}
# Reinit the loop
($line,$lref)=$self->shiftline();
}
# Did not get a defined line? End of input file.
return;
}
}
Once you've implemented the parse function, you can use your document
class, using the public interface presented in the next section.
PUBLIC INTERFACE for scripts using your parser
Constructor
process(%)
This function can do all you need to do with a po4a document in one
invocation. Its arguments must be packed as a hash. ACTIONS:
a. Reads all the po files specified in po_in_name
b. Reads all original documents specified in file_in_name
c. Parses the document
d. Reads and applies all the addenda specified
e. Writes the translated document to file_out_name (if given)
f. Writes the extracted po file to po_out_name (if given)
ARGUMENTS, beside the ones accepted by new() (with expected type):
file_in_name (@)
List of filenames where we should read the input document.
file_in_charset ($)
Charset used in the input document (if it isn't specified, it
will try to detect it from the input document).
file_out_name ($)
Filename where we should write the output document.
file_out_charset ($)
Charset used in the output document (if it isn't specified, it
will use the po file charset).
po_in_name (@)
List of filenames where we should read the input po files from,
containing the translation which will be used to translate the
document.
po_out_name ($)
Filename where we should write the output po file, containing
the strings extracted from the input document.
addendum (@)
List of filenames where we should read the addenda from.
addendum_charset ($)
Charset for the addenda.
new(%)
Create a new Po4a document. Accepted options (but be in a hash):
verbose ($)
Sets the verbosity.
debug ($)
Sets the debugging.
Manipulating document files
read($)
Add another input document at the end of the existing one. The
argument is the filename to read.
Please note that it does not parse anything. You should use the
parse() function when you're done with packing input files into the
document.
write($)
Write the translated document to the given filename.
Manipulating po files
readpo($)
Add the content of a file (which name is passed in argument) to the
existing input po. The old content is not discarded.
writepo($)
Write the extracted po file to the given filename.
stats()
Returns some statistics about the translation done so far. Please
note that it's not the same statistics than the one printed by
msgfmt --statistic. Here, it's stats about recent usage of the po
file, while msgfmt reports the status of the file. It is a wrapper
to the Locale::Po4a::Po::stats_get function applied to the input po
file. Example of use:
[normal use of the po4a document...]
($percent,$hit,$queries) = $document->stats();
print "We found translations for $percent\% ($hit from $queries) of strings.\n";
Manipulating addenda
addendum($)
Please refer to po4a(7) for more information on what addenda are,
and how translators should write them. To apply an addendum to the
translated document, simply pass its filename to this function and
you are done ;)
This function returns a non-null integer on error.
INTERNAL FUNCTIONS used to write derivated parsers
Getting input, providing output
Four functions are provided to get input and return output. They are
very similar to shift/unshift and push/pop. The first pair is about
input, while the second is about output. Mnemonic: in input, you are
interested in the first line, what shift gives, and in output you want
to add your result at the end, like push does.
shiftline()
This function returns the next line of the doc_in to be parsed and
its reference (packed as an array).
unshiftline($$)
Unshifts a line of the input document and its reference.
pushline($)
Push a new line to the doc_out.
popline()
Pop the last pushed line from the doc_out.
Marking strings as translatable
One function is provided to handle the text which should be translated.
translate($$$)
Mandatory arguments:
- A string to translate
- The reference of this string (ie, position in inputfile)
- The type of this string (ie, the textual description of its
structural role ; used in Locale::Po4a::Po::gettextization() ;
see also po4a(7), section Gettextization: how does it work?)
This function can also take some extra arguments. They must be
organized as a hash. For example:
$self->translate("string","ref","type",
'wrap' => 1);
wrap
boolean indicating whether we can consider that whitespaces in
string are not important. If yes, the function canonizes the
string before looking for a translation or extracting it, and
wraps the translation.
wrapcol
The column at which we should wrap (default: 76).
comment
An extra comment to add to the entry.
Actions:
- Pushes the string, reference and type to po_out.
- Returns the translation of the string (as found in po_in) so that
the parser can build the doc_out.
- Handles the charsets to recode the strings before sending them to
po_out and before returning the translations.
Misc functions
verbose()
Returns if the verbose option was passed during the creation of the
TransTractor.
debug()
Returns if the debug option was passed during the creation of the
TransTractor.
detected_charset($)
This tells TransTractor that a new charset (the first argument) has
been detected from the input document. It can usually be read from
the document header. Only the first charset will remain, coming
either from the process() arguments or detected from the document.
get_out_charset()
This function will return the charset that should be used in the
output document (usually useful to substitute the input document's
detected charset where it has been found).
It will use the output charset specified in the command line. If it
wasn't specified, it will use the input po's charset, and if the
input po has the default "CHARSET", it will return the input
document's charset, so that no encoding is performed.
recode_skipped_text($)
This function returns the recoded text passed as argument, from the
input document's charset to the output document's one. This isn't
needed when translating a string (translate() recodes everything
itself), but it is when you skip a string from the input document
and you want the output document to be consistent with the global
encoding.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
One shortcoming of the current TransTractor is that it can't handle
translated document containing all languages, like debconf templates,
or .desktop files.
To address this problem, the only interface changes needed are:
- take a hash as po_in_name (a list per language)
- add an argument to translate to indicate the target language
- make a pushline_all function, which would make pushline of its
content for all language, using a map-like syntax:
$self->pushline_all({ "Description[".$langcode."]=".
$self->translate($line,$ref,$langcode)
});
Will see if it's enough ;)
AUTHORS
Denis Barbier <barbier@linuxfr.org>
Martin Quinson (mquinson#debian.org)
Jordi Vilalta <jvprat@gmail.com>