Re: Internationalizing Linux

Helge Hafting (helge.hafting@daldata.no)
Thu, 03 Dec 1998 08:56:17 +0100

Bruce Korb wrote:
> John R. Lenton wrote:
[...]
> > speaks? I'm thinking along the lines of replacing e.g.
> > printk("Calibrating delay loop...") with
> > printk(CALIBRATING_DELAY_LOOP) and then including a
> > language-specific .h file with all the #define's. I
>
> This causes a maintenance headache. With this scheme,
> whenever a new printk gets a macro-ized, you will have
> to make sure the entries are correctly added to the 'n'
> language specific headers, even if they are inserted in English.
[...]
It doesn't have to be like that. Consider using one file
kmsg.h included by anything that needs the message #define's
Now this file contains two lines only:

#include <english.h> /* Because English is the development language for Linux
*/
#include <norwegian.h> /* Or whatever you may want instead */

Obviously english.h defines all messages in english, and all other
languages simply redefines them. A developer would only need to
update english.h, the other languages could be done by language
maintainers. An untranslated message would simply come out
in english - no big deal.

Helge Hafting

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