GNU GetText--Simple or graceful

Developed under Windows, accustomed to the loadstring () function to record text from the resource, so as to achieve multi-language support. But in PHP. and under Linux. Also, not everyone uses loadstring () to load text, but writes its own function, reading text from XML or even from a database.

The principle of loading the text resources is nothing more than the Key+value mode, that is, to each string is numbered, and then by number to find the corresponding value. But the problem with this is that numbering is often difficult, especially in English. Also, the program is written with key, and value is stored elsewhere. It is not intuitive to have placeholder escape characters such as%s and so on in the text. Also, if the first time if not according to Key+value Way to write code, the back to support, there is a lot of work.

I always thought that there was no better way to do it, until yesterday I discovered the GNU GetText Library because of the multilingual support for studying PHP applications. This thing is really a perfect solution, because her approach is too beautiful, too concise. As long as the existing string, packaging a GetText ("original text") on it (in PHP, even with _ () can be). Do not establish any key alone, the text inside is key. Then with a tool, you can automatically extract all the text to form a PO file. Then as long as the PO file for editing and translation, and finally compiled into Mo file can be. I was also worried that every time you generate a PO file to be fully translated, the results found that there is no need, people have already considered the function of merging.

Multi-language support, it turns out to be so simple.

http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/