i18n does not work due to wrong place of *.mo files (on Ubuntu)

Thank you Peer.

Unfortunately, I can't let NSsbackup install files in /usr/share/ when installing from 'make install' . This place is used by the deb installation (which is the standard) .
However there is clearly a problem as you mentioned it. I guess it's due to a mis-usage of gettext in NSsbackup. I'll look into it.

Another solution to this should be the explicit setting of the path to the locales.

The Python documentation suggests:

import gettext
gettext.bindtextdomain('myapplication', '/path/to/my/language/directory')
gettext.textdomain('myapplication')
_ = gettext.gettext
# ...
print _('This is a translatable string.')

However, this is not enough additional initialization if a programm uses Glade. The textdomain needs to be set up for Glade too.

See the modified file 'nssbackup-config-gui' that is attached. Of course, this is only an example. The literals need to be removed etc.

This works with 'pure' Python and Glade. Now the localization files were used from any given directory.

Greets.

For information:

There is still something wrong - translation of the UI (Glade) works so far, but none debug message were translated. I'll go into this.

Just FYI, I usually don't make the debug strings translatable.That might be the reason why you don't have the translations ...

I looked at your 'patch'. Looks good. I'll integrate it once I get home.

Hello,

I've looked into the whole i18n thing under Python and figured out the following:

If the translation files were stored in an arbitrary directory, it is possible to set up this directory before using the i18n functionality. Moreover, this is the recommend way by the Python documentation (...For this reason, it is always best to call bindtextdomain() with an explicit absolute path at the start of your application...)

To setup the gettext module there are actually two approaches:

1. following the GNU gettext API:

    import gettext
    from gettext import gettext as _ # declaration of _()
    application = 'nssbackup'
    locale_dir = '/usr/local/share/locale'
    gettext.bindtextdomain(application, locale_dir) # binds the domain to a directory
    gettext.textdomain(application) # and specifies the domain we want to use
    print _('_File')

2. this example uses the convenience function gettext.install():
There is function for convenience (gettext.install) in the Python module (AFAIK this function is not part of the GNU API) that does the same as 'bindtextdomain' and 'textdomain' and the declaration of _() within a single call.

    import gettext
    application = 'nssbackup'
    locale_dir = '/usr/local/share/locale'
    gettext.install(application, locale_dir)
    print _('_File')

For the setup of i18n support within Glade it is neccessary to call 'bindtextdomain' and 'textdomain', no function 'install' exists here.

So, the best practice for i18n support in nssbackup should be the use of the GNU gettext API because there is no 'install' function for Glade. This would look like:

    import gtk
    import gtk.glade
    import gettext
    from gettext import gettext as _ # declaration of _()
    application = 'nssbackup'
    locale_dir = '/usr/local/share/locale'
    gettext.bindtextdomain(application, locale_dir)
    gettext.textdomain(application)
    gtk.glade.bindtextdomain(application, locale_dir)
    gtk.glade.textdomain(application)
    ...

Of course this is neccessary for all related files, but i didn't modified all related files -> it didn't worked completly so far.

I added modified versions of all files that needs to be modified. Testing this was sucessful (UI and print statements now are translated). The Makefile needs no changes now.

Regards, Peer.

References:
http://www.python.org/doc/2.5.2/lib/node731.html
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2000-August/008537.html

Maybe it is useful to define the application's name and the path to the translation files within a module in the nssbackup package. Then these data could be imported by the touched files above.

Benefit: string literals were stored once in a single place.

I commited your fix to BZR : https://code.launchpad.net/~nssbackup-dev/nssbackup/0.2.
Thank a lot