Veronica Berglyd Olsen
da2685131d
* Fix wrapping of setup help text * Fix wrong info in help description in setup * Drop .pro file and generate lupdate arguments on the fly * Generate lrelease arguments on the fly * Update i18n readme file
99 lines
4.6 KiB
Markdown
99 lines
4.6 KiB
Markdown
# novelWriter Internationalisation
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The `i18n` folder contains the translation files for the Qt5 GUI. There are two types of files
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involved: the `nw_XX.ts` and the `nw_XX.qm` files. The `nw_XX.ts` files are located in the `i18n`
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folder at the root of the repository, and the `nw_XX.qm` together with the `project_XX.json` files
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are located in `novelwriter/assets/i18n`. The latter are JSON translation maps for the novelWriter
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projects, used by the Build Novel Project tool.
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**Note**
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When making a new translation, or updating an existing one, only commit the `nw_XX.ts` you have
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made changes to. The `qtlupdate` command mentioned below may modify all `nw_XX.ts` slightly, but
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please _don't_ commit those changes to the pull request.
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## Qt GUI Localisation
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The `.qm` files are the actual files used by the application to translate the GUI into another
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language other than the default British English. The files are not generated by default. They can
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be built with:
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```bash
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python3 setup.py qtlrelease
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```
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Before adding translations to an existing translation file, you may need to update the file against
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the current source code. This is done by running the command:
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```bash
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python3 setup.py qtlupdate
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```
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If you want to update specific language files, you can add them as one or more arguments, like so:
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```bash
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python3 setup.py qtlupdate i18n/nw_fr.ts
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```
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To add a new language to the translation framework, run the command above with the file name of the
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new, and not yet existing, language file. Make sure the file name is in the correct format. All
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translation files must be located in the `i18n` folder, start with `nw_` and end with `.ts`. In
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between goes the language code. It must be a valid ISO language code, otherwise novelWriter will
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not accept the file.
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For instance, to add a file for a language with language code "XX", run:
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```bash
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python3 setup.py qtlupdate i18n/nw_xx.ts
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```
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This will build a new `i18n/nw_XX.ts` file for the language you just added. The file can then be
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edited with the Qt 5 Linguist application provided by Qt. This is by far easier than manually
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editing the `.ts` file. Please select "English" and "United Kingdom" as the source langauge if
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prompted by Qt 5 Linguist.
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When you're done editing, you can build the `novelwriter/assets/i18n/nw_XX.qm` file and test it in
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novelWriter. The Preferences dialog should list the newly added language, and you can select it and
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test it.
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Please do not submit the `.qm` files to the repository. Only the `.ts` file you just added in the
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`i18n` folder is needed.
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**Note**
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These commands require that you have the tools Qt 5 Linguist and the PyQt5 tool `pylupdate5`
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installed on your system.
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For Ubuntu/Debian, run:
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```bash
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sudo apt install qttools5-dev-tools pyqt5-dev-tools
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```
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### Missing QtBase Translations
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The default Qt dialogs also have translations, for instance for standard buttons like "Yes", "No",
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"Ok", "Cancel", etc. Generally, these translations files are installed with the Qt libraries on
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your system, and novelWriter will collect those translations from there. However, these
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translations are missing for many languages.
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As a starting point, there is no need to translate any entries in the `.ts` files that are under
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elements starting with the letter "Q", like "QPlatformTheme", "QWizard", etc. If these turn up in
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English in novelWriter after activating a translation, it means they are probably missing in the Qt
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library, and you may also need to translate these.
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These additional translation entries are generated from a file named `i18n/qtbase.py`, which is not
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a file that novelWriter uses. It is there only to generate these additional entries for the `.ts`
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files.
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## Project Localisation
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Projects can have a different language setting than the GUI itself. The files with format
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`project_XX.json` in `novelwriter/assets/i18n` are simple translation maps for text that goes into
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the exported documents generated by the Build Novel Project tool.
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The files are loaded based on the language setting in the build tool. At the present time, no other
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parts of the application use these files. Since these are used as replacement lookups, they are
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maintained as plain JSON files. The main usage is to generate chapter headers as number words.
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Adding new translations for these files is easy. Just copy the `project_en.json` file, rename it to
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the appropriate language coded filename, and edit it. Please use the underscore as separator if a
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language needs to be localised to a specific country under a language. The importer will for
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instance look for `en_US` first, then use `en` if it is not found. If there are no matching files,
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the project falls back to using English.
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