Add support for building internationalized translations.

A new directory install/po has been added which contains all
the translations for all files in IPA.

The build has been agumented to build these files. Also the
autogen.sh script was mostly replaced by autoreconf, the preferred
method. The old autogen.sh sript also had some serious bugs in the
way it compared versions which caused it to run old versions of some
of the tools, using standared autoreconf is much better.

1 files changed, 123 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/install/po/README b/install/po/README
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..e032e3529
--- /dev/null
+++ b/install/po/README
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+Q: I've added a new source file, how do I make sure it's strings get translated?
+
+A: Edit Makefile.in and add the source file to the appropriate *_POTFILES list.
+   Then run "make update-po".
+
+Q: How do I pick up new strings to translate from the source files after the
+   source have been modified?
+
+A: make update-po
+   This regenerates the pot template file by scanning all the source files.
+   Then the new strings are merged into each .po file from the new pot file.
+
+Q: How do I just regenerate the pot template file without regenerating all the
+   .po files?
+
+A: make update-pot
+
+Q: How do I add a new language for translation?
+
+A: Edit the LINGUAS file and add the new language. Then run "make create-po".
+   This will generate a new .po file for each language which doesn't have one
+   yet. Be sure to add the new .po file(s) to the source code repository.
+
+Q: What files must be under source code control?
+
+A: The files Makefile.in, LINGUAS control the build, they must be in the SCM.
+   The *.pot and *.po files are used by translators, they must be in SCM so the
+   translator can checkout out a .po files, add the translations, and then check
+   the .po file back in.
+
+   Be careful, .po files may be automatically updated when the source files
+   change (or the .pot changes, usually the .pot file changes only as a result
+   of rescanning the source files). This mean a .po file might be automatically
+   updated while a translator has the file out for editing, all the caveats
+   about SCM merging apply.
+
+Q: Which are automatically generated and thus do not need to be in SCM?
+
+A: The *.mo files are automatically generated on demand from their corresponding
+   .po file. 
+
+Q: What role does the .pot file play?
+
+A: The .pot file is called a template file. It is generated by scanning all the
+   source files (e.g. *.py *.c *.h) in the project using xgettext. xgettext
+   locates every translatable string (e.g. strings marked with _()) and adds
+   that string along with metadata about it's location to the .pot file. Thus
+   the .pot file is a collection of every translatable string in the project. If
+   you edit a source file and add a translatable string you will have to
+   regenerate the .pot file in order to pick up the new string.
+
+Q: What is the relationship between a .po file and the .pot file?
+
+A: A .po file contains the translations for particular language. It derives from
+   the .pot file. When the .pot file is updated with new strings to translate
+   each .po will merge the new strings in. The .po file is where translators
+   work providing translations for their language. Thus it's important the .po
+   not be recreated from scratch and is kept in SCM, otherwise the translators
+   work will be lost.
+
+   Let's use an example for French, it's .po file will be fr.po.
+
+   1)  Developer creates main.c with one translatable sting _("Begin").
+
+   2)  Produce the .pot file by running xgettext on main.c
+
+   3)  .pot file contains one msgid, "Begin" 
+
+   4)  fr.po is created from the .pot file, it also contains one msgid, "Begin"
+
+   5)  Translator edits fr.po and provide the French translation of "Begin".
+
+   6)  Developer adds new translatable sting _("End") to main.c
+
+   7)  Generate a new .pot file by running xgettext on main.c
+
+   8)  .pot file contains two msgid's, "Begin", and "End"
+
+   9)  fr.po is missing the new msgid in the .pot file, so the .pot is merged
+       into fr.po by running msgmerge. This copies into fr.po the new "End" msgid
+       but preserves the existing translations in fr.po (e.g. "Begin"). The fr.po
+       will now have 2 msgid's one which is translated already (e.g. "Begin") and
+       one that untranslated (e.g. "End").
+
+   10) Sometime later the French translator comes back to see if he/she needs to
+       add more translations to fr.po. They see there is a missing translation,
+       they check fr.po out from SCM, add the missing translation, and then
+       check fr.po back into SCM.
+
+   This means at any given moment the set of .po files will have varying degrees
+   of translation completeness. Because the .po files are merged when the source
+   code files are updated existing translations are not lost. It also means a
+   .po file which was fully translated may need new translations after a .pot
+   update. It is permissible to have incomplete translations in a message
+   catalog, at run time if a translation for a particular string is available in
+   the message catalog the user will be presented with the string in their
+   language. However if the string is not yet translated in the .po file then
+   they just get the original string (typically in English).
+
+Q: What are .mo files?
+
+A: .mo files are the content of a .po file but in "machine" format for fast
+   run time access (mo = Machine Object, po = Portable Object). .mo files are
+   what gets installed along with the package. Think of a .po as a source file
+   which is compiled into a object file for run time use.
+
+Q: Why don't we use gettexize and autopoint?
+
+A: Because the framework they produce is too limited. Specifically there is no
+   way to pass the source language to xgettext when it scans a file. xgettext
+   only knows how to automatically determine the language from the source files
+   extension. However we have many files without extensions, thus we have to
+   group all Python (et. al.) files together and run xgettext on every file *we*
+   know to Python (because xgettext can't figure this out itself if there is no
+   file extension). There is another added benefit of avoiding gettextize and
+   autopoint, simplicity. Managing translations is complex and hard enough as it
+   is, gettextize and autopoint adds another whole layer of complexity which
+   just further obscures things.
+
+Q: Who created the awful mess and who do I ask when things don't work as I
+   expect or I have further questions?
+
+A: John Dennis <jdennis@redhat.com>