[sane-devel] Where is the define of SANE_I18N

[Olaf Meeuwissen]

Hi,

DanTan at pek.destiny.com.cn writes:

> Hey guys,
>
> I have working on the source code of sane-backends, I found the macro
> SANE_I18N is used to sane’s localization. But I just found the follow
> lines of it’s define
>
> #ifndef SANE_I18N
> #define SANE_I18N(text) text
> #endif
>
> The above lines, dose nothing. So I wonder how SANE_I18N translate
> these backends?

The backends don't translate.  It's the responsibility of the *frontend*
to translate the strings.  The SANE_I18N macro is only the marker we use
to tell xgettext which strings should be translated.  These strings end
up in po/sane-backends.pot.

The reasoning behind making the frontend responsible for translation is
that the backend may be executing remotely (e.g. via saned).  You don't
want to get the translations suitable for a remotely executing process.
This process may execute under a different LANG setting than your local
SANE frontend.

Let's say you run your frontend with LANG=zh_CN and scan via the net
backend on a server that just happens to run saned with LANG=fr_FR.
Would you be happy with French messages?  Probably not ;-)

Hope this helps,
--
Olaf Meeuwissen, LPIC-2            FSF Associate Member since 2004-01-27
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