1/* 2 * Copyright 2011-2012 Haiku, Inc. All rights reserved. 3 * Distributed under the terms of the MIT License. 4 * 5 * Authors: 6 * Axel Dörfler, axeld@pinc-software.de 7 * John Scipione, jscipione@gmail.com 8 * Oliver Tappe, zooey@hirschkaefer.de 9 * 10 * Corresponds to: 11 * headers/os/locale/Catalog.h hrev45083 12 * src/kits/locale/Catalog.cpp hrev45083 13 */ 14 15 16/*! 17 \file Catalog.h 18 \ingroup locale 19 \ingroup libbe 20 \brief Provides the BCatalog class. 21*/ 22 23 24/*! 25 \class BCatalog 26 \ingroup locale 27 \ingroup libbe 28 \brief String localization handling. 29 30 BCatalog is the class that allows you to perform string localization. This 31 means you give it a string in english, and it automatically returns the 32 translation of this string in the user's specified language, if available. 33 34 Most of the time, you don't have to deal with BCatalog directly. You use 35 the translation macros instead. However, there are some cases where you 36 will have to use catalogs directly. These include : 37 - Tools for managing catalogs : if you want to add, remove or edit 38 entries in a catalog, you need to do it using the BCatalog class. 39 - Accessing catalogs other than your own : the macros only grant you 40 access to the catalog linked with your application. To access 41 other catalogs (for example if you create a script interpreter and 42 want to localize the scripts), you will have to open a catalog 43 associated with your script. 44 45 \section macros Using the macros 46 47 You don't have to do much in your program to handle catalogs. You must 48 first set the B_TRANSLATION_CONTEXT define to a string that identifies which 49 part of the application the strings you will translate are in. This allows 50 the translators to keep track of the strings in the catalog more easily, 51 and find where they are visible in the application. then, all you have to 52 do, is enclose any string you want to make translatable in the 53 B_TRANSLATE() macro. This macro has two uses, it will allow your text to 54 be replaced at run-time by the proper localized one, but it will also 55 allow to build the base catalog, the one that you will send to the 56 translator team, from your sourcecode. 57 58 Note that each image (application, library or add-on) using these macros 59 must be linked with liblocalestub.a. This allows the Locale Kit to identify 60 it and locate the matching string catalogs for translation. 61 62 \section chaining Chaining of catalogs 63 64 The catalogs you get from the locale kit are designed to use a fallback 65 system so that the user get strings in the language he's the most fluent 66 with, depending on what catalogs are available. 67 68 For example, if the user sets his language preferences as French(France), 69 spanish, english, when an application loads a catalog, the following rules 70 are used: 71 - Try to load a French(France) catalog. If it is found, this catalog 72 will automatically include strings from the generic french catalog. 73 - Try to load a generic french catalog. 74 - Try to load a generic spanish catalog. 75 - Try to load a generic english catalog. 76 - If all of them failed, use the strings that are in the source code. 77 78 Note that French(France) will failback to French, but then directly to the 79 language in the source code. This avoids mixing 3 or more languages in the 80 same application if the catalogs are incomplete and avoids confusion. 81 82 \since Haiku R1 83*/ 84 85 86/*! 87 \fn BCatalog::BCatalog() 88 \brief Construct an empty BCatalog object. 89 90 Should be followed by SetTo() method to set the catalog. 91 92 \since Haiku R1 93*/ 94 95 96/*! 97 \fn BCatalog::BCatalog(const entry_ref& catalogOwner, const char* language, 98 uint32 fingerprint) 99 \brief Construct a BCatalog object for the given \a catalogOwner. 100 101 If you don't specify a language, the system default list will be used. 102 The language is passed here as a 2 letter ISO code. 103 104 The fingerprint is a way to check that the catalog that will be loaded 105 matches the current version of the application. A catalog made for a 106 different version of the application can be loaded if you set the 107 fingerprint to \c 0. This is usually not a problem, it only means that 108 some strings may not be translated properly. But if you want to provide 109 different versions of your application, it may be useful to separate their 110 catalogs. 111 112 \param catalogOwner entry_ref for which to load a catalog. 113 \param language The language of the catalog to load. If \c NULL, the user 114 settings will be used. 115 \param fingerprint The fingerprint version-info for the catalog to load. 116 If \c 0, the fingerprint will not be checked,and any version of the 117 catalog will be loaded. 118 119 \since Haiku R1 120*/ 121 122 123/*! 124 \fn BCatalog::~BCatalog() 125 \brief Destroys the BCatalog object freeing memory used by it. 126 127 \since Haiku R1 128*/ 129 130 131/*! 132 \fn const char* BCatalog::GetString(const char* string, 133 const char* context, const char* comment) 134 \brief Get a string from the catalog. 135 136 This method access the data of the catalog and returns you the translated 137 version of the string. You must pass it the context where the string is, as 138 the same string may appear somewhere else and need a different translation. 139 The comment is optional. It is meant as an help to translators, when the 140 string alone is not helpful enough or there are special things to note. 141 The comment is also used as a way to uniquely identify a string, so if two 142 identical strings share the same context, it is still possible to provide 143 different translations. 144 145 \param string The string to translate. 146 \param context The context where the string is located. 147 \param comment Supplementary comment for translators. 148 149 \returns The translated string, or the one passed as a parameter if no 150 translation was found. 151 152 \since Haiku R1 153*/ 154 155 156/*! 157 \fn const char* BCatalog::GetString(uint32 id) 158 \brief Get a string by id from the catalog. 159 160 The id based version of this method is slightly faster, as it doesn't 161 have to compute the hash from the 3 parameters. However, it will fail 162 if there is an hash collision, so you should still fallback to the first 163 one in case of problems. Also note that the hash value may be different 164 from one catalog to another, depending on the file format they are stored 165 in, so you shouldn't rely on this method unless you are sure you can keep 166 all the catalog files under control. 167 168 \param id The identifier of the string. 169 170 \returns The translated string if found, or an empty string. 171 172 \since Haiku R1 173*/ 174 175 176/*! 177 \fn status_t BCatalog::GetData(const char* name, BMessage* msg) 178 \brief Get custom data from the catalog. 179 180 This method allows you to localize something else than raw text. This 181 may include pictures, sounds, videos, or anything else. Note there is no 182 support for generating a catalog with such data inside, and the current 183 format may not support it. If you need to localize data that is not text, 184 it is advised to handle it by yourself. 185 186 \param name The name of the data to retrieve. 187 \param msg The BMessage to fill in with the data. 188 189 \returns A status code. 190 \retval B_OK Everything went fine. 191 \retval B_ERROR Unable to get an exclusive lock on data. 192 \retval B_NO_INIT Catalog is \c NULL. 193 \retval B_NAME_NOT_FOUND catalog with the specified \a name could not be 194 found. 195 196 \since Haiku R1 197*/ 198 199 200/*! 201 \fn status_t BCatalog::GetData(uint32 id, BMessage* msg) 202 \brief Get custom data from the catalog. 203 204 As for GetString, the id-based version may be subject to hash-collisions, 205 but is faster. 206 207 Note the current catalog format doesn't allow storing custom data in 208 catalogs, so the only way to use this method is providing your own 209 catalog add-on for storing the data. 210 211 \since Haiku R1 212*/ 213 214 215/*! 216 \fn status_t BCatalog::GetSignature(BString* sig) 217 \brief Get the catalog mime-signature. 218 219 This method fills the sig string with the mime-signature associated to the 220 catalog. 221 222 \param sig The string where to copy the signature. 223 224 \returns An error code. 225 226 \since Haiku R1 227*/ 228 229 230/*! 231 \fn status_t BCatalog::GetLanguage(BString* lang) 232 \brief Get the catalog language. 233 234 This method fills the lang string with the language name for the catalog. 235 236 \param lang The string where to copy the language. 237 238 \returns An error code. 239 \retval B_OK Everything went as expected. 240 \retval B_ERROR Could not get exclusive lock on catalog. 241 \retval B_BAD_VALUE \a lang is \c NULL. 242 \retval B_NO_INIT Catalog data is \c NULL. 243 244 \since Haiku R1 245*/ 246 247 248/*! 249 \fn status_t BCatalog::GetFingerprint(uint32* fp) 250 \brief Get the catalog fingerprint. 251 252 This method setsfp to the fingerprint of the catalog. This allows you 253 to check which version of the sourcecode this catalog was generated from. 254 255 \param fp The integer to set to the fingerprint value. 256 257 \returns An error code. 258 \retval B_OK Everything went as expected. 259 \retval B_ERROR Could not get exclusive lock on catalog. 260 \retval B_BAD_VALUE \a fp is \c NULL. 261 \retval B_NO_INIT Catalog data is \c NULL. 262 263 \since Haiku R1 264*/ 265 266 267/*! 268 \fn status_t BCatalog::SetTo(const entry_ref& catalogOwner, 269 const char* language, uint32 fingerprint) 270 \brief Reload the string data. 271 272 This method reloads the data for the given signature and fingerprint. 273 274 \param catalogOwner The \c entry_ref of the catalog that you want to load. 275 \param language The language of the catalog to load. If \c NULL, the user 276 settings will be used. 277 \param fingerprint The fingerprint of the catalog you want to load. 278 279 \returns A status code, \c B_OK on success, \c B_ERROR on error. 280 281 \since Haiku R1 282*/ 283 284 285/*! 286 \fn status_t BCatalog::InitCheck() const 287 \brief Check if the catalog is in a valid and usable state. 288 289 \returns A status code. 290 \retval B_OK The catalog is initialized properly. 291 \retval B_ERROR Could not get exclusive lock on catalog. 292 \retval B_NO_INIT Catalog data is \c NULL. 293 294 \since Haiku R1 295*/ 296 297 298/*! 299 \fn int32 BCatalog::CountItems() const 300 \brief Gets the number of items in the catalog. 301 302 \returns the number of strings in the catalog or 0 on error. 303 304 \since Haiku R1 305*/ 306