Hello, As I understand it, gettext() is designed to retrieve messages from 'R-pkg' domains. As such, it cannot retrieve some of the messages in the 'pkg' domains (those supposed to be accessed by C code only, I know), namely, all messages ending with space(s) or \n. This is clearly indicated in ?gettext (at least for trailing spaces): "For 'gettext', leading and trailing whitespace is ignored when looking for the translation." So, my questions: 1) Do I really need to write C code to retrieve all messages from 'pkg' domain? 2) Wouldn't it be useful to add an argument to gettext() (like trim = TRUE), or alternatively, to propose a Gettext() function in utils packages that allows retrieving those messages with trailing space(s) or \n in 'pkg' domain from R code? Best, Philippe Grosjean
gettext() and messages in 'pkg' domain
3 messages · Brian Ripley, Philippe GROSJEAN
On Sun, 30 Dec 2007, Philippe Grosjean wrote:
Hello, As I understand it, gettext() is designed to retrieve messages from 'R-pkg' domains. As such, it cannot retrieve some of the messages in the 'pkg' domains (those supposed to be accessed by C code only, I know), namely, all messages ending with space(s) or \n. This is clearly indicated in ?gettext (at least for trailing spaces): "For 'gettext', leading and trailing whitespace is ignored when looking for the translation."
(\n _is_ whitespace).
So, my questions: 1) Do I really need to write C code to retrieve all messages from 'pkg' domain?
Yes.
2) Wouldn't it be useful to add an argument to gettext() (like trim = TRUE), or alternatively, to propose a Gettext() function in utils packages that allows retrieving those messages with trailing space(s) or \n in 'pkg' domain from R code?
Apparently only useful to you: it's certainly not useful for the internationalization of R itself, and I don't see why you can't organize the package so that the C-level messages don't have leading/trailing whitespace *if* you want to mix up domains.
Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595
Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
On Sun, 30 Dec 2007, Philippe Grosjean wrote:
Hello, As I understand it, gettext() is designed to retrieve messages from 'R-pkg' domains. As such, it cannot retrieve some of the messages in the 'pkg' domains (those supposed to be accessed by C code only, I know), namely, all messages ending with space(s) or \n. This is clearly indicated in ?gettext (at least for trailing spaces): "For 'gettext', leading and trailing whitespace is ignored when looking for the translation."
(\n _is_ whitespace).
Yes, soory.
So, my questions: 1) Do I really need to write C code to retrieve all messages from 'pkg' domain?
Yes.
2) Wouldn't it be useful to add an argument to gettext() (like trim = TRUE), or alternatively, to propose a Gettext() function in utils packages that allows retrieving those messages with trailing space(s) or \n in 'pkg' domain from R code?
Apparently only useful to you: it's certainly not useful for the internationalization of R itself, and I don't see why you can't organize the package so that the C-level messages don't have leading/trailing whitespace *if* you want to mix up domains.
Messages are is someone else's package. So, I have no control on them!