P18 Internationalizing Preprocessor
About
General
P18 is a fast and flexible file preprocessor with macro processing
capabilities and special support for internationalization. It is well suited
for processing arbitrary text files and creating translations to different
languages. The reason I wrote this tool was because I needed to
internationalize a web application written in PHP.
P18 is a macro processor, recognizing preprocessor directives (such as
conditionals, macro/variable definitions, file inclusions, ...),
macro/variable substitutions, and I18N (internationalization) escapes.
P18 comes with a set of tools for managing an I18N message database. P18 can
be used to scan for messages, create translation template files, and merge new
translations into an existing database.
Internationalization Using a Preprocessor
Internationalization of an application normally requires a message-lookup
routine which is called by the application program at runtime. The basic idea
of internationalization using a preprocessor is to generate a set of files
from a single source file, one for each language. For a web application for
example, a source file ``myfile.php'' is translated to a set of
files called ``myfile.php.languageID''. Many web servers
can be configured to choose the appropriate translation based on the browsers
language settings. (The same trick works for static HTML files, of course.)
Status
P18 is a work in progress. The current version is usable, however some
planned functionality is still missing. I am currently the only developer,
and I'm busy with other projects. It may take a while until version 1.0 is
reached.
License
P18 is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. See
topic License for details.
Sascha Demetrio
gargamel@wizard-labs.org