Ubuntu Manpage: Locale::Po4a::TeX - convert TeX documents and derivatives from/to PO files

NAME

       Locale::Po4a::TeX - convert TeX documents and derivatives from/to PO files

DESCRIPTION

       The po4a (PO for anything) project goal is to ease translations (and more interestingly,
       the maintenance of translations) using gettext tools on areas where they were not expected
       like documentation.

       Locale::Po4a::TeX is a module to help the translation of TeX documents into other [human]
       languages. It can also be used as a base to build modules for TeX-based documents.

       Users should probably use the LaTeX module, which inherits from the TeX module and
       contains the definitions of common LaTeX commands.

TRANSLATING WITH PO4A::TEX

       This module can be used directly to handle generic TeX documents.  This will split your
       document in smaller blocks (paragraphs, verbatim blocks, or even smaller like titles or
       indexes).

       There are some options (described in the next section) that can customize this behavior.
       If this doesn't fit to your document format you're encouraged to write your own derivative
       module from this, to describe your format's details.  See the section WRITING DERIVATIVE
       MODULES below, for the process description.

       This module can also be customized by lines starting with "% po4a:" in the TeX file. This
       process is described in the INLINE CUSTOMIZATION section.

OPTIONS ACCEPTED BY THIS MODULE

       These are this module's particular options:

       debug
           Activate debugging for some internal mechanisms of this module.  Use the source to see
           which parts can be debugged.

       no_wrap
           Comma-separated list of environments which should not be re-wrapped.

           Note that there is a difference between verbatim and no_wrap environments.  There is
           no command and comments analysis in verbatim blocks.

           If this environment was not already registered, po4a will consider that this
           environment does not take any parameters.

       exclude_include
           Colon-separated list of files that should not be included by \input and \include.

       definitions
           The name of a file containing definitions for po4a, as defined in the INLINE
           CUSTOMIZATION section.  You can use this option if it is not possible to put the
           definitions in the document being translated.

       verbatim
           Comma-separated list of environments which should be taken as verbatim.

           If this environment was not already registered, po4a will consider that this
           environment does not take any parameters.

       Use these options to override the default behavior of the defined commands.

INLINE CUSTOMIZATION

The TeX module can be customized with lines starting by % po4a:. These lines are
interpreted as commands to the parser. The following commands are recognized:

% po4a: command command1 alias command2
Indicates that the arguments of the command1 command should be treated as the
arguments of the command2 command.

% po4a: command command1 parameters
This describes in detail the parameters of the command1 command. This information
will be used to check the number of arguments and their types.

You can precede the command1 command by

an asterisk (*)
po4a will extract this command from paragraphs (if it is located at the beginning
or the end of a paragraph). The translators will then have to translate the
parameters that are marked as translatable.

a plus (+)
As for an asterisk, the command will be extracted if it appear at an extremity of
a block, but the parameters won't be translated separately. The translator will
have to translate the command concatenated to all its parameters. This keeps more
context, and is useful for commands with small words in parameter, which can have
multiple meanings (and translations).

Note: In this case you don't have to specify which parameters are translatable,
but po4a must know the type and number of parameters.

a minus (-)
In this case, the command won't be extracted from any block. But if it appears
alone on a block, then only the parameters marked as translatable will be
presented to the translator. This is useful for font commands. These commands
should generally not be separated from their paragraph (to keep the context), but
there is no reason to annoy the translator with them if a whole string is enclosed
in such a command.

The parameters argument is a set of [] (to indicate an optional argument) or {} (to
indicate a mandatory argument). You can place an underscore (_) between these
brackets to indicate that the parameter must be translated. For example:
% po4a: command *chapter [_]{_}

This indicates that the chapter command has two parameters: an optional (short title)
and a mandatory one, which must both be translated. If you want to specify that the
href command has two mandatory parameters, that you don't want to translate the URL
(first parameter), and that you don't want this command to be separated from its
paragraph (which allow the translator to move the link in the sentence), you can use:
% po4a: command -href {}{_}

In this case, the information indicating which arguments must be translated is only
used if a paragraph is only composed of this href command.

% po4a: environment env parameters
This defines the parameters accepted by the env environment and specifies the ones to
be translated. This information is later used to check the number of arguments of the
\begin command. The syntax of the parameters argument is the same as described for
the others commands. The first parameter of the \begin command is the name of the
environment. This parameter must not be specified in the list of parameters. Here are
some examples:
% po4a: environment multicols {}
% po4a: environment equation

As for the commands, env can be preceded by a plus (+) to indicate that the \begin
command must be translated with all its arguments.

% po4a: separator env "regex"
Indicates that an environment should be split according to the given regular
expression.

The regular expression is delimited by quotes. It should not create any back-
reference. You should use (?:) if you need a group. It may also need some escapes.

For example, the LaTeX module uses the "(?:&|\\\\)" regular expression to translate
separately each cell of a table (lines are separated by '\\' and cells by '&').

The notion of environment is expanded to the type displayed in the PO file. This can
be used to split on "\\\\" in the first mandatory argument of the title command. In
this case, the environment is title{#1}.

% po4a: verbatim environment env
Indicate that env is a verbatim environment. Comments and commands will be ignored in
this environment.

If this environment was not already registered, po4a will consider that this
environment does not take any parameters.

WRITING DERIVATE MODULES

       pre_trans
       post_trans
       add_comment
           Add a string as a comment to be added around the next translated element.  This is
           mostly useful to the texinfo module, as comments are automatically handled in TeX.

       translate
           Wrapper around Transtractor's translate, with pre- and post-processing filters.

           Comments of a paragraph are inserted as a PO comment for the first translated string
           of this paragraph.

       get_leading_command($buffer)
           This function returns:

           A command name
               If no command is found at the beginning of the given buffer, this string will be
               empty.  Only commands that can be separated are considered.  The
               %separated_command hash contains the list of these commands.

           A variant
               This indicates if a variant is used.  For example, an asterisk (*) can be added at
               the end of sections command to specify that they should not be numbered.  In this
               case, this field will contain "*".  If there is no variant, the field is an empty
               string.

           An array of tuples (type of argument, argument)
               The type of argument can be either '{' (for mandatory arguments) or '[' (for
               optional arguments).

           The remaining buffer
               The rest of the buffer after the removal of this leading command and its
               arguments.  If no command is found, the original buffer is not touched and
               returned in this field.

       get_trailing_command($buffer)
           The same as get_leading_command, but for commands at the end of a buffer.

       translate_buffer
           Recursively translate a buffer by separating leading and trailing commands (those
           which should be translated separately) from the buffer.

           If a function is defined in %translate_buffer_env for the current environment, this
           function will be used to translate the buffer instead of translate_buffer().

       read
           Overloads Transtractor's read().

       read_file
           Recursively read a file, appending included files which are not listed in the
           @exclude_include array.  Included files are searched using the kpsewhich command from
           the Kpathsea library.

           Except from the file inclusion part, it is a cut and paste from Transtractor's read.

       parse_definition_file
           Subroutine for parsing a file with po4a directives (definitions for new commands).

       parse_definition_line
           Parse a definition line of the form "% po4a: ".

           See the INLINE CUSTOMIZATION section for more details.

       is_closed
       parse
       docheader

INTERNAL FUNCTIONS used to write derivative parsers

       Command and environment functions take the following arguments (in addition to the $self
       object):

       A command name
       A variant
       An array of (type, argument) tuples
       The current environment

       The first 3 arguments are extracted by get_leading_command or get_trailing_command.

       Command and environment functions return the translation of the command with its arguments
       and a new environment.

       Environment functions are called when a \begin command is found. They are called with the
       \begin command and its arguments.

       The TeX module only proposes one command function and one environment function:
       generic_command and generic_environment.

       generic_command uses the information specified by register_generic_command or by adding
       definition to the TeX file:
        % po4a: command command1 parameters

       generic_environment uses the information specified by register_generic_environment or by
       adding definition to the TeX file:
        % po4a: environment env parameters

       Both functions will only translate the parameters that were specified as translatable
       (with a '_').  generic_environment will append the name of the environment to the
       environment stack and generic_command will append the name of the command followed by an
       identifier of the parameter (like {#7} or [#2]).

STATUS OF THIS MODULE

       This module needs more tests.

       It was tested on a book and with the Python documentation.

TODO LIST

       Automatic detection of new commands
           The TeX module could parse the newcommand arguments and try to guess the number of
           arguments, their type and whether or not they should be translated.

       Translation of the environment separator
           When \item is used as an environment separator, the item argument is attached to the
           following string.

       Some commands should be added to the environment stack
           These commands should be specified by couples.  This can be used to specify commands
           beginning or ending a verbatim environment.

       Others
           Various other points are tagged TODO in the source.

KNOWN BUGS

       Various points are tagged FIXME in the source.

AUTHORS

        Nicolas François <nicolas.francois@centraliens.net>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

       Copyright © 2004, 2005 Nicolas FRANÇOIS <nicolas.francois@centraliens.net>.

       This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of
       GPL (see the COPYING file).