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Contributing a translation

If you would like to contribute to a translation of eCub, please download the latest .po file in the Download page, translate the strings, and then compile a .mo file, for example using poEdit. The .mo file should be called ecub.mo and should be placed in a suitably-named directory in the eCub installation (next to the executable). For example, a French translation would go in the fr_FR directory. You should also copy the file wxstd.mo from a directory under locale in the wxWidgets 2.8.8 distribution.

Then when you restart eCub, that language should be available in the General Preferences dialog; change to this language, and restart eCub once more.

If you email me your translation, I can bundle it with the next version of eCub.

Thank you in advance for your translations!

Resources and help files

If a resource file exists in the translation directory, it will be used, otherwise the default file (in the en_GB folder or in the application folder) will be used. The following is a list of the resources that should be translated.

• ecub.htb: the manual
• ecub.bin: resources file in zip format, containing images and HTML files under the Resources folder name, including:
  • about.htm: 'About' text
  • welcome.htm: welcome text

If you wish to translate the HTB files, I can supply free registration for Anthemion HelpBlocks to do this and can send the eCub manual sources on request.

More on working with .po files

When starting a translation, take a copy of the .po file downloaded from this site, renamed to ecub.po. For each msgid string there should be an equivalent msgstr, the translation.

When a new version of eCub is released, you will probably find that some strings have been changed. Download the latest .po again, and merge it with your original .po file like this:

  msgmerge --quiet --no-fuzzy-matching ecub.po ecub1.04.po > ecub_new.po
  mv ecub_new.po ecub.po

Redundant translations (where the original string has been changed or removed) are commented out and added to the end of the file. Open the file in poEdit to find the untranslated strings.

If you wish to compile the .po into a .mo for testing purposes, you can use poEdit or you can run the command manually:

  msgfmt -o ecub.mo ecub.po

Windows binaries of the gettext tools, including msgmerge.exe and msgfmt.exe, are available here.

Other tips:

• To preserve mnemonics in menus, you can add the mnemonic in brackets after the translated string.
• Ask us if you have questions about the meaning of any of the strings.

More on working with help files

The files ecub.htb is a wxWidgets HTML Help file that must be edited using HelpBlocks.

Here are some guidelines for translating these files:

• Please request the source files from us, and copy to a new location. When you have finished, please submit all files back to us.
• The structure must remain identical to the original in all translations. In particular, the name of the topic identifier (shown in
  the page properties dialog) should not be changed and it should be in the same relative position. Otherwise, the identifiers associated
  with each topic name will not be the same, and the wrong pages will be displayed when Help is pressed in the application.
• Use the _APP macro for referring to eCub. You can redefine it if necessary, in the macro preferences page.
• The What's New? page does not need to be translated, though you can add a note at the start in the native language.

Table of languages and their canonical (directory) names