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Window Maker Internationalisation
~ A guide to enable support for language translations ~
~ in Window Maker and to the contributors ~
~ who want to help translating. ~
-- Christophe CURIS --
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This manual is for Window Maker window manager, version 0.96.0.
Copyright (c) 2015 The Window Maker Team.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program, see file COPYING for details.
Published by The Window Maker team on 8 June 2026.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1 Enabling Languages support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
1.1 Getting the list of supported languages . . . . . . . . . 89
1.2 Translations for Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
1.3 Setting 'LINGUAS' at system level . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
2 Choosing the Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
3 Troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
4 Contribute to Translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
4.1 Install the latest sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
4.2 Updating the Translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
4.3 Translate the Man Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
4.4 Checking the Result . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
4.5 Submitting your Contribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
1 Enabling Languages support
****************************
Window Maker has the possibility to be translated in many languages, but by
default none of them will be installed, and the support for translation will
not be compiled.
To enable the translation capabilities, you have to specify which
language(s) you want to be installed: this is done with the variable
'LINGUAS' when running the 'configure' script. This variable should contain
the space-separated list of languages you want to install.
You could for instance enable both French ('fr') and Dutch ('nl') with
this:
./configure LINGUAS="fr nl"
You can of course add any other option that you want to the 'configure'
command. From the moment you specify the variable, the 'configure' script
will check that you have the appropriate dependencies for this (basically
the 'gettext' function and the 'libintl' library); when you run 'make' to
compile the project, it will also compile the translation ('mo' files) for
the language(s) you asked (if available, of course), and during 'make
install' it will install them in the usual directory.
The installation directory can be changed with the standard option
'--localedir' to the 'configure' script, the default path being
"<prefix>/share/locale/<lang>/LC_MESSAGES").
1.1 Getting the list of supported languages
===========================================
The naming convention for the languages follows the ISO 639-1 standard, for
which you can find a summary list in the GNU gettext manual
(https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Usual-Language-Codes.html).
But as Window Maker does not support all of them, the 'configure' script
will print a warning for each language you specify that it does not know,
and sum up at the end the list of enabled languages that will be installed.
There is a non-standard possibility to set 'LINGUAS' to 'list', in which
case the 'configure' script will provide you the list of languages it
supports, and stop:
./configure LINGUAS="list"
There is also another non-standard possibility to enable all the
languages that Window Maker supports by setting 'LINGUAS' to '*'. This is an
internal trick implemented so the development team can have the command
'make distcheck' include some checks on translations:
./configure LINGUAS='*'
1.2 Translations for Menus
==========================
In order to propose an Application Menu (also called Root Menu) that is also
translated in the language of the interface, Window Maker implements two
complementary mechanisms:
The first, always enabled when i18n support is enabled, is to look for
the menu file containing the name of the locale. For example, if the file is
called "menu" and the language is set as 'LANG=fr_FR.utf-8', then Window
Maker will search for, and use the first match found:
* 'menu.fr_FR.utf-8'
* 'menu.fr_FR'
* 'menu.fr'
* 'menu'
The second possibility, which is not enabled by default, is to be able to
use a custom "po" file which contains the translations for the text of the
menu. This feature is enabled at compile time, using the option
'--with-menu-textdomain' to the 'configure' script. For example, if you
specify:
./configure --with-menu-textdomain=WMMenu
then the translations for the menu will be searched in the file "WMMenu.mo"
located at the standard location, the default path being
"<prefix>/share/locale/<lang>/LC_MESSAGES/WMMenu.mo".
If you do not enable the feature (the default behaviour, or with an
explicit '--without-menu-textdomain'), then Window Maker will *not* try to
translate the strings, even using its own domain file ("WindowMaker.mo").
1.3 Setting 'LINGUAS' at system level
=====================================
As the variable 'LINGUAS' is quite standard, you also have the possibility
to set its value in the "config.site" file for Autoconf. This file can be
placed in one of these paths:
* "<prefix>/share/config.site"
* "<prefix>/etc/config.site"
This way, the same language list will be used for all the programs that
use Autoconf that you would compile. Please note that if you also specify a
value on the command line, it will have precedence over the value in that
file.
2 Choosing the Language
***********************
If you have compiled and installed Window Maker with support for your
language, the effective translation is done is the very same way as any
other application on an Unix system, you just have to set the shell variable
'LANG' to your language before 'wmaker' is started. In 'sh' type of shell
(sh, ksh, bash, ...), this is done for example with ('fr' is for French):
export LANG=fr
There is also a command line option '--locale' for Window Maker which may
be used to set the language:
wmaker --locale fr
When using this option, Window Maker will use the locale you specified,
redefining the 'LANG' environment variable to this value so all program
started from Window Maker will inherit its value.
If your system is using systemd, you can also configure the locale at
system level using the command:
localectl set-locale LANG=fr
You can check if the current value is properly supported with the
command:
locale
If this does not work, you may need first to activate the support for
your locale in the system; you can get the list of currently enabled locales
with the command:
locale -a
You should be able to enable a new language support by editing the file
"/etc/locale.gen" to uncomment the locale(s) you need (by removing the '#'
character and space(s) in front of it, and by running the command
'locale-gen' as root.
For further information, you may wish to read dedicated documentation,
for example from the Linux Documentation Project
(http://tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/other-lang.html) or through pages like
Shell Hacks' note on Changing Locale
(http://www.shellhacks.com/en/HowTo-Change-Locale-Language-and-Character-Set-in-Linux).
3 Troubleshooting
*****************
If I18N support does not work for you, check these:
- the 'LANG' environment variable is set to your locale, and the locale
is supported by your OS's locale or X's locale emulation. you can
display all supported locales by executing "'locale -a'" command if it
is available; you can check if your locale is supported by X's locale
emulation, see "/usr/share/X11/locale/locale.alias"
- check if you are using an appropriate fonts for the locale you chose.
If you're using a font set that has a different encoding than the one
used by Xlib or libc, bad things can happen. Try specifically putting
the encoding in the 'LANG' variable, like 'ru_RU.KOI8-R'. Again, see
"/usr/share/X11/locale/locale.alias"
- the fonts you're using support your locale. if your font setting on
"$HOME/GNUstep/Defaults/WindowMaker" is like...
WindowTitleFont = "Trebuchet MS:bold:pixelsize=12";
MenuTitleFont = "Trebuchet MS:bold:pixelsize=12";
then you can't display Asian languages ('ja', 'ko', 'ch', ...)
characters using 'Trebuchet MS'. A font that is guaranteed to work for
any language is 'sans' (or 'sans-serif'). 'sans' is not a font itself,
but an alias which points to multiple fonts and will load the first in
that list that has the ability to show glyphs in your language. If you
don't know a font that is suited for your language you can always set
all your fonts to something like:
"sans:pixelsize=12"
However, please note that if your font is something like:
"Trebuchet MS,sans serif:pixelsize=12"
this will not be able to display Asian languages if any of the previous
fonts before sans are installed. This is because unlike the proper font
pickup that 'sans' guarantees for your language, this construct only
allows a font fallback mechanism, which tries all the fonts in the list
in order, until it finds one that is available, even if it doesn't
support your language.
Also you need to change font settings in style files in the
"$HOME/Library/WindowMaker/Style" directory.
- the 'LC_CTYPE' environment variable is unset or it has the correct
value. If you don't know what is the correct value, unset it.
4 Contribute to Translations
****************************
You may have noticed that many translations are not up to date, because the
code has evolved but the persons who initially contributed may not have had
the time to continue, so any help is welcome.
Since Window Maker 0.95.7 there are some targets to 'make' that can help
you in that task.
4.1 Install the latest sources
==============================
If you want to contribute, the first step is get the development branch of
the code; this is done using 'git'. If you do not feel confident at all with
using 'git', you may also try to ask for a snapshot on the developer's
mailing list <wmaker-dev@googlegroups.com>. With 'git' the procedure is:
# Get your working copy of the sources
git clone git://repo.or.cz/wmaker-crm.git
# Go into that newly created directory
cd wmaker-crm
# Switch to the branch where everything happens
git checkout next
# Generate the configuration script
./autogen.sh
Now you should have an up-to-date working copy ready to be compiled; you
will not need to go the full way but you should run the 'configure' script,
so it will create the "Makefile"s, and you may want to compile the code once
so it will not do it again automatically later while you are doing something
else:
# Setup the build, enabling at least the language you want to work on
./configure LINGUAS="<list of iso 639 country code>"
# Compile the code once
make
4.2 Updating the Translations
=============================
The typical process for translating one program is:
* generate a POT file (PO Template): this is done with 'xgettext' which
searches for all the strings from the sources that can be translated;
* update the PO file for your language: this is done with 'msgmerge'
which compares the PO file and aligns it to the latest template;
* edit the new PO file: this is done by you with your favourite editor,
to add the missing 'msgstr', review the possible fuzzy matches, ...
* check the PO file: unfortunately there is no definitive method for
this;
* submit your contribution to the project: this is done with 'git'.
In Window Maker, you have actually 5 'po' files to take care of:
- "po/<lang>.po": for Window Maker itself
- "WPrefs.app/po/<lang>.po": for the Preference Editor program
- "WINGs/po/<lang>.po": for the graphic toolkit library
- "wrlib/po/<lang>.po": for the image processing library
- "util/po/<lang>.po": for the command-line tools of Window Maker
As stated previously, there is a 'make' target that can help you to
automatically generate the POT and update the PO for these 5 cases:
make update-lang PO=<lang>
Once run, it will have updated as needed the 5 'po' files against the
latest source code. You may wish to use the command 'git gui' to view the
changes; you can now edit the files to complete the translation, correct
them, remove deprecated stuff, ... Please note that the encoding should be
set to UTF-8 as this is now the standard.
If you think an error message is too obscure, just ask on the developer
mailing list <wmaker-dev@googlegroups.com>: in addition to clarifications
there's even a chance for the original message to be improved!
You may find some information on working with 'po' file in the GNU
gettext documentation
(https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Editing.html).
4.3 Translate the Man Pages
===========================
You may want to extend the translation to the documentation that is provided
to users in the form of Unix _man pages_. The sources of the man pages are
located in the "doc/" directory; the translation should be placed in the
directory "doc/_lang_/" with the same file name.
The directory will also need a file "Makefile.am" which provides the list
of man pages to be included in the distribution package and to be installed.
You can probably get inspiration from an existing one from another language;
if you do not feel confident about it do not hesitate to ask on the
project's mailing list (<wmaker-dev@googlegroups.com>), either for help or
to ask someone to make it for you.
Please note that although most man pages sources are directly in man page
format (nroff, the file extension being a number), a few of them are
processed by a script (those with the ".in" extension, like "wmaker.in").
This is done because in some case we want the man page to reflect the actual
compilation options.
You may not want to bother with this hassle, in which case you can simply
name your translation file with the ".1" and remove the special '@keyword@'
marks. If you are sure you want to keep that processing but do not feel
confident about hacking the "Makefile.am" do not hesitate to ask on the
project's mailing list (<wmaker-dev@googlegroups.com>).
4.4 Checking the Result
=======================
In the Window Maker build tree you also have another target that can help
you, it is 'make check'.
At current time, it does not check much, but if during the 'make
update-lang' new 'po' file have been created you may get some errors,
because you have to add these new files to the variable 'EXTRA_DIST' in the
corresponding "Makefile".
If you do not feel confident about doing it, do not worry, just tell
about it when you submit your work, and some developer on the mailing list
will just be happy to do it for you when integrating your valuable
contribution (we always like when someone helps making Window Maker better).
4.5 Submitting your Contribution
================================
Preliminary Remark: if the update process made changes in a 'po' file but
you did not change any 'msgstr' content, it is probably a good idea to not
submit the changes to that 'po' file because it would just add noise.
When you feel ready to send your changes, the first step is to prepare
them. This is done with 'git': if you have not run the 'git gui' previously
then it is a good time to do it now. This window offers you the possibility
to show your changes and to decide what you want to send.
The window is divided in 4 panes:
* top-right show the current changes you have selected, for review (and
also for cherry-picking stuff if you want to select precisely)
* top-left ("Unstaged Changes") the list of files with changes to be
send, you can click on the name of the file to see the changes, you can
click on the icon of the file if you want to send all the changes in
this file; an icon in blue shows a file that have been changed and an
icon in black shows a file that is new
* bottom-left ("Staged Changes") the list of files with changes that you
have chosen to send so far, you can click on the file name to view
these changes, you can click on the icon if you want to remove the
changes from this file from the list to send
* bottom-right ("Commit Message") the message you want to attach to your
changes when you submit them to the development team
The idea here is to pick your changes to the 'po' files; for the commit
message you may wish to stuck to a simple, single line:
"Updated translations for <lang>"
The penultimate step is to click on the button <Sign Off> (it will add a
line in the commit message), and then click on the button <Commit>. From
this time, the commit message will clear itself and the "Staged Changes"
also, showing that your action was done.
You may now quit the 'git gui', the final step begins by running this
command:
git format-patch HEAD^
This will generate a file named like
"0001-updated-translations-for-XX.patch" which contains your changes, ready
for sending. The goal will now be to email this file to
<wmaker-dev@googlegroups.com>. If you feel confident in having 'git' send it
for you, you may want to read the file "The-perfect-Window-Maker-patch.txt"
to see how to configure 'git' for mailing, so you can run:
git send-email 0001-updated-translations-for-XX.patch
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