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Qtopia can be translated into several languages. By default Qtopia ships only with English. Additional language-specific packages are available for purchase. For further information please contact sales@trolltech.com .
Internationalizing Qtopia software is much the same as internationalizing any Qt-based software. You should be familiar with the Qt internationalization documentation, the QObject::tr() functions, Qt Linguist and the internationalization process in general before you proceed with this document.
Note: Qtopia ships without any translation files, later steps will show how to generate the translation files.
Adding a translation for Qtopia is easy. There are a few steps you will need to take in order to successfully translate Qtopia into your chosen language.
To translate Qtopia into an additional language you must perform the translation process described above for all the application, desktop and configuration files, and any help documentation that you wish to have available in that language.
Create the directory $QPEDIR/i18n/<new-lang> for the new language, for example run:
mkdir $QPEDIR/i18n/zh_CN
if you want to create translation files for Simplified Chinese
Every language needs a .directory file that serves as a description for the language itself. For example, the Simplified Chinese .directory in $QPEDIR/i18n/zh_CN may look like this:
[Translation]
File=QtopiaI18N
Context=Simplified Chinese
[Desktop Entry]
Name[]=Simplified Chinese
A .directory file contains the untranslated (English) name of the language itself as it is presented to the user. To create a .directory run:
cp $QPEDIR/i18n/en_US/.directory $QPEDIR/i18n/zh_CN/
# edit the .directory file setting the correct value for Context and Name[]
vim $QPEDIR/i18n/zh_CN/.directory
To generate translation files for your chosen language reconfigure Qtopia, e.g. run:
$QPEDIR/configure -languages "ja fr zh_CN" <other configure options>
This will tell the build system that it has to build translation files for Japanese, French and Simplified Chinese. configure will abort if a new language is passed to its -languages option without having created the .directory file described in the first step of this guide.
It is now possible to run:
make lupdate
This will result in the performance of the following steps for each language specified via Qtopia's configure option -languages
The script $QPEDIR/bin/nct_lupdate is executed in order to generate translation files for those strings that cannot be found in source code. This includes most config and desktop files in the $QPEDIR directory. Each of these config/desktop files must have a Translation group similar to the following one which can be found in $QPEDIR/apps/Applications/clock.desktop:
[Translation]
File=QtopiaApplications
This causes the generation of the file QtopiaApplications.ts in $QPEDIR/i18n/<your-lang>. If this file already exists it will be updated without the loss of any existing content. For more information on build system related translation information please refer to the following guides:
The next step is to run the linguist tool. Linguist makes it easy to work with translations. It supports incremental translation, which helps you to keep track of any additional content that is added to Qtopia and needs to be translated. Any strings that are ambiguous or otherwise unclear or suspect in some way, should be translated to whatever degree is possible and then left in the unfinished state.
For further information refer to : Linguist Manual
The last step is to run the command make install in the Qtopia ($QPEDIR) directory. As part of this process lrelease is used to create Qt message files (.qm files).
Any time a User Visible string has changed run make lupdate to cause the recreation of the translation files. It is then a matter of editing the changed .ts files with linguist so that the correct text is shown for the new strings. The last step is the installation of the edited translation files by running make install.
Qtopia uses DejaVu as the default font, however this font does not specify the characters for languages such as Chinese.
The configuration file $QPEDIR/etc/default/FontMap.conf has to be translated so that the correct font family is used for each language. It defines the font which can be selected by users within Qtopia. If this configuration file is empty, Qtopia will use DejaVu font as the default font. Therefore, a valid FontMap.conf and QtopiaDefaults.ts file is required to suppress DejaVu as the preferred choice. The original FontMap.conf looks like this:
[Translation]
File=QtopiaDefaults
Context=FontMap
[Map]
Font0[]=small,helvetica,10
Font1[]=normal,helvetica,12
Font2[]=large,helvetica,14
Such a configuration will be suitable for most Western languages. The Map group defines three font settings that will be used by Qtopia, each of which have three parameters as follows:
This configuration file is marked for translation. When executing make lupdate the build system will create: $QPEDIR/i18n/<your-lang>/QtopiaDefaults.ts. Due to its special meaning, the string "small,helvetica,12" cannot be translated as a normal string, for example, a French translation may look like this:
<name>FontMap</name>
<message encoding="UTF-8}{
<source>Small,helvetica,10</source>
<translation>Petit,unifont,11</translation>
</message>
As a result, Petit will be presented to the user and selecting this option will load the fontset unifont. The chosen font has to support all characters of the given language.
When make install is executed the build system generates Qt message files (.qm files).
Application files will be placed as follows:
/opt/Qtopia/i18n/language/<appname>.qm
The language is an ISO 639 language code optionally followed by an underscore and an ISO 3166 territory (for example, "en", "en_GB", "ja", "ja_JP"). Locale suffixes are supported. For example, if your application uses British English it can have a /opt/Qtopia/i18n/en_US/<appname>.qm file specifying changes for American English. Translations with locale suffixes take precedence over translations without such suffixes.
The <appname> is the filename of the application executable.
For plug-ins that are shared libraries the files must be placed in the following directory:
/opt/Qtopia/i18n/language/<pluginname>.qm
The <pluginname> is the filename of the plug-in shared object minus any extensions, but including lib if the plug-in incorporates that prefix.
Desktop/Config files (eg. /opt/Qtopia/apps/Application/<appname>.desktop) can also be translated. For example, the texteditor.desktop file begins with:
[Translation]
File=QtopiaApplications
Context=Notes
[Desktop Entry]
Comment[]=A Text Editing Program
Exec=textedit
Icon=TextEditor
Type=Application
MimeType=text/*
Name[]=Notes
This causes the file /opt/Qtopia/i18n/language/QtopiaApplications.qm to be loaded (if it isn't already) and the strings marked with "[]" to be translated in the "Text Editor" context. The "bin/nct_lupdate" script can be used to maintain .ts files from .desktop files.
All desktop files have to be encoded in UTF-8.
For certain applications it may be a requirement to translate image. A word processor application may have a tool button that markes text as bold. The button itself may have the capital letter B as image. This would not be suitable for e.g. a German user interface where the B would have to be replaced by an image displaying the letter F ('Bold' translates to the German 'Fett').
The resource system supports the following two types of translatable images:
The string i18n serves as an indicator to activate a lookup mechanism that is aware of the current user interface language. The pixmap above will be looked up in one of the following directories:
As comparison a call to QPixmap(":image/bold") will search in different directories:
A picture that requires a translation must be put into one of the i18n subfolders. American English (en_US) is used as a fall back mechanism in case there is no translation for the current language. Therefore developers who want to provide translations for their pictures have to ensure that they provide a translation/picture for American English.
Online documentation for applications is written in the HTML subset supported by the Qt richtext widget. Such documentation files must be placed as follows:
English documentation:
/opt/Qtopia/help/html/<appname>-suffixes.html
Non-English documentation:
/opt/Qtopia/help/<lang>/html/<appname>-suffixes.html
These files are encoded in UTF-8.
Other files that are language-specific are:
The Qtopia build system makes it very easy to translate your own applications. The example application in $QPEDIR/examples/application summarizes what has to be done in order to generate .ts files. Further details on how to build and install additional Qtopia applications can be found in the build system help .
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