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ts-desktop-tool

ts-desktop-tool is a a small and hackish tool to help translate .desktop files using Qt's .ts files.

Genesis

It is the result of not finding any way of externalizing desktop file translations in the Qt world. The closest I could find was in the context of KDE, but it seemed to be buried far too deep inside their tool set for it to be usable outside of KDE. At any rate, coming from a GetText world with intltool, I couldn't accept having to manually translate the desktop file directly in it, with all languages mixed.

So this tool started to form, basically as a poor man's intltool dealing with .ts files.

This tool was written to only depend on a POSIX shell and basic POSIX utilities like sed, grep & such. As a result, although I tried to make it as robust as it was easy enough to do, it is not proof against weird or invalid input. Expect the unexpected on bizarre input, with a wide definition of bizarre. This said, it should still work well on any common case.

Features

This tool can do two things:

  • Create a C++ source file parseable by lupdate from a desktop file

      ts-desktop-tool extract

  • Merge translations from a series of .ts file into a .desktop file

      ts-desktop-tool merge TS_FILE...

All commands read the template .desktop file from stdin, and write their output to stdout. The input format for desktop files is the same as the one used by intltool, that is keys to be translated should be prefixed by an underscore (_).

Makefile.am example

translations = \
	myapp_de.ts \
	myapp_es.ts \
	myapp_fr.ts \
    ...

desktopdir = $(datadir)/applications
desktop_in_files = myapp.desktop.in
nodist_desktop_DATA = $(desktop_in_files:.desktop.in=.desktop)

$(desktop_in_files:.desktop.in=.desktop): $(translations:%=$(srcdir)/%)

SUFFIXES = .desktop.in .desktop.cpp .desktop
.desktop.in.desktop.cpp:
	ts-desktop-tool extract <$< >$@
.desktop.in.desktop:
	ts-desktop-tool merge $(translations:%=$(srcdir)/%) <$< >$@
CLEANFILES = \
	$(desktop_in_files:.desktop.in=.desktop.cpp) \
	$(desktop_in_files:.desktop.in=.desktop)
EXTRA_DIST = \
	$(desktop_in_files)

# Assuming the update-ts rule runs lupdate on all its prerequisites
update-ts: $(desktop_in_files:.desktop.in=.desktop.cpp)

Limitations

This tool is fairly hackish in its implementation, and doesn't use robust parsers -- far from it. It should work in all usual cases, but can likely get fooled by valid yet uncommon input, and will surely be fooled by invalid input.

License

Copyright 2018 Colomban Wendling <ban@herbesfolles.org>

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.