/* * Copyright 2011, Haiku, Inc. All Rights Reserved. * Distributed under the terms of the MIT License. * * Authors: * Axel Dörfler, axeld@pinc-software.de * John Scipione, jscipione@gmail.com * Oliver Tappe, zooey@hirschkaefer.de * * Corresponds to: * /trunk/headers/os/locale/Catalog.h rev 43095 * /trunk/src/kits/locale/Catalog.cpp rev 43095 */ /*! \file Catalog.h \brief Provides the BCatalog class. */ /*! \class BCatalog \ingroup locale \brief Class handling string localization. BCatalog is the class that allows you to perform string localization. This means you give it a string in english, and it automatically returns the translation of this string in the user's specified language, if available. Most of the time, you don't have to deal with BCatalog directly. You use the translation macros instead. However, there are some cases where you will have to use catalogs directly. These include : \li Tools for managing catalogs : if you want to add, remove or edit entries in a catalog, you need to do it using the BCatalog class. \li Accessing catalogs other than your own : the macros only grant you access to the catalog linked with your application. To access other catalogs (for example if you create a script interpreter and want to localize the scripts), you will have to open a catalog associated with your script. \section macros Using the macros You don't have to do much in your program to handle catalogs. You must first set the B_TRANSLATION_CONTEXT define to a string that identifies which part of the application the strings you will translate are in. This allows the translators to keep track of the strings in the catalog more easily, and find where they are visible in the application. then, all you have to do, is enclose any string you want to make translatable in the B_TRANSLATE() macro. This macro has two uses, it will allow your text to be replaced at run-time by the proper localized one, but it will also allow to build the base catalog, the one that you will send to the translator team, from your sourcecode. \section chaining Chaining of catalogs The catalogs you get from the locale kit are designed to use a fallback system so that the user get strings in the language he's the most fluent with, depending on what catalogs are available. For example, if the user sets his language preferences as french(France), spanish, english, when an application loads a catalog, the following rules are used : \li Try to load a french(France) catalog. If it is found, this catalog will automatically include strings from the generic french catalog. \li Try to load a generic french catalog. \li Try to load a generic spanish catalog. \li Try to load a generic english catalog. \li If all of them failed, use the strings that are in the source code. Note that french(France) will failback to french, but then directly to the language in the source code. This avoids mixing 3 or more languages in the same application if the catalogs are incomplete and avoids confusion. */ /*! \fn BCatalog::Catalog(const entry_ref& catalogOwner, const char* language = NULL, uint32 fingerprint = 0); \brief Construct a catalog for the given \a catalogOwner. If you don't specify a language, the system default list will be used. The language is passed here as a 2 letter ISO code. The fingerprint is a way to check that the catalog that will be loaded matches the current version of the application. A catalog made for a different version of the application can be loaded if you set the fingerprint to \c 0. This is usually not a problem, it only means that some strings may not be translated properly. But if you want to provide different versions of your application, it may be useful to separate their catalogs. \param catalogOwner entry_ref for which to load a catalog. \param language The language of the catalog to load. If \c NULL, the user settings will be used. \param fingerprint The fingerprint version-info for the catalog to load. If \c 0, the fingerprint will not be checked,and any version of the catalog will be loaded. */ /*! \fn const char* BCatalog::GetString(const char* string, const char* context = NULL, const char* comment = NULL) \brief Get a string from the catalog. This method access the data of the catalog and reeturns you the translated version of the string. You must pass it the context where the string is, as the same string may appear somewhere else and need a differnet translation. The comment is optional. It is meant as an help to translators, when the string alone is not helpful enough or there are special things to note. The comment is also used as a way to uniquely identify a string, so if two identical strings share the same context, it is still possible to provide different translations. \param string The string to translate. \param context The context where the string is located. \param comment Supplementary comment for translators. \returns The translated string, or the one passed as a parameter if no translation was found. */ /*! \fn const char* BCatalog::GetString(uint32 id) \brief Get a string by id from the catalog. The id based version of this method is slightly faster, as it doesn't have to compute the hash from the 3 parameters. However, it will fail if there is an hash collision, so you should still fallback to the first one in case of problems. Also note that the hash value may be different from one catalog to another, depending on the file format they are stored in, so you shouldn't rely on this method unless you are sure you can keep all the catalog files under control. \param id The identifier of the string. \returns The translated string if found, or an empty string. */ /*! \fn status_t BCatalog::GetData(const char* name, BMessage* msg) \brief Get custom data from the catalog. This method allows you to localize something else than raw text. This may include pictures, sounds, videos, or anything else. Note there is no support for generating a catalog with such data inside, and the current format may not support it. If you need to localize data that is not text, it is advised to handle it by yourself. \param name The name of the data to retrieve. \param msg The BMessage to fill in with the data. \returns An error code. */ /*! \fn status_t BCatalog::GetData(uint32 id, BMessage* msg) \brief Get custom data from the catalog. As for GetString, the id-based version may be subject to hash-collisions, but is faster. Note the current catalog format doesn't allow storing custom data in catalogs, so the only way to use this method is providing your own catalog add-on for storing the data. */ /*! \fn status_t BCatalog::GetSignature(BString* sig) \brief Get the catalog mime-signature. This method fills the sig string with the mime-signature associated to the catalog. \param sig The string where to copy the signature. \returns An error code. */ /*! \fn status_t BCatalog::GetLanguage(BString* lang) \brief Get the catalog language. This method fills the lang string with the language name for the catalog. \param lang The string where to copy the language. \returns An error code. */ /*! \fn status_t BCatalog::GetFingerprint(uint32* fp) \brief Get the catalog fingerprint. This method setsfp to the fingerprint of the catalog. This allows you to check which version of the sourcecode this catalog was generated from. \param fp The integer to set to the fingerprint value. \returns An error code. */ /*! \fn status_t BCatalog::SetCatalog(const entry_ref& catalogOwner, uint32 fingerprint) \brief Reload the string data. This method reloads the data for the given signature and fingerprint. \param catalogOwner The entry_ref of the catalog that you want to load. \param fingerprint The fingerprint of the catalog you want to load. \returns An error code. */ /*! \fn status_t BCatalog::InitCheck() const \brief Check if the catalog is in an useable state. \returns \c B_OK if the catalog is initialized properly. */ /*! \fn int32 BCatalog::CountItems() \brief Returns the number of items in the catalog. \returns the number of strings in the catalog. */ /*! \fn BCatalogaddOn* BCatalog::CatalogAddOn() \brief Returns the internal storage for this catalog. \returns the internal storage class used by this catalog. You should not have to use it. */