i18n

Internationalization in Linux with libintl & gettext.

POT: Portable Object Template
PO: Portable Object
MO: Machine Object

Create template

Create a POT for a file

xgettext -s -o main.pot main.cpp -k_

With the keywords (prefixes) _ _n and _d

xgettext -s -o main.pot main.cpp -k_ -k_n -k_d --package-name=main --package-version=1

Create a translations file

Create a PO from the POT in es_CO

msginit -l es_CO.UTF-8 -o main.po -i main.pot

If it was not auto translated fill the translations in msgstr.
Set the charset to UTF-8

Create a binary file

Create a MO from the PO

msgfmt -c -v -o main.mo main.po

Review

Check if the program is loading the .MO correctly

strace -e trace=openat ./libintl_gettext

Use msgunfmt for reverse-compiling .mo files

The code

mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_MODULE_PATH=$PWD -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ..
cmake --build .

CMake-configure creates de POT template in ./build/locale/es/LC_MESSAGES
Then, create the .PO file with msginit.
Fill the translations, including the plural forms.
Then, create the .MO file with msgfmt.

Then run

./build/libintl_gettext

The messages should be shown in Spanish, one of them with the plural form.

Poedit

The application Poedit is used to create and modify PO and MO files from POT files. Having a POT you can generate a PO and fill the translations. It is particularly useful when having an already translated PO file, and updating the POT, then you can update the PO from the POT using Poedit.

See: