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+TRANSLATING VIM MESSAGES
+
+In this directory you will find xx.po files, where "xx" is a language code.
+Each file contains the translation of English Vim messages for one language.
+The files are in "po" format, used by the gettext package. Please refer to
+the gettext documentation for more information.
+
+The GNU gettext library, starting with version 0.10.37, supports converting
+messages from one encoding to another. This requires that it was compiled
+with HAVE_ICONV. The result is that the messages may be in any encoding
+supported by iconv and will be automatically converted to the currently used
+encoding.
+
+The GNU gettext library, starting with version 0.10.36, uses a new format for
+some encodings. This follows the C99 standard for strings. It means that
+when a multi-byte character includes the 0x5c byte, this is not recognized as
+a backslash. Since this format is incompatible with Solaris, Vim uses the old
+format. This is done by setting the OLD_PO_FILE_OUTPUT and OLD_PO_FILE_INPUT
+environment variables. When you use the Makefile in this directory that will
+be done for you. This does NOT work with gettext 0.10.36. Don't use it, get
+0.10.37.
+
+Have a look at these helper scripts, they may be useful for you:
+https://github.com/adaext/vim-menutrans-helper
+
+
+ON MS-WINDOWS
+
+The distributed files are generated on Unix, but this should also be possible
+on MS-Windows. Download the gettext packages, for example from:
+
+ http://sourceforge.net/projects/gettext
+
+You might have to do the commands manually. Example:
+
+ cd c:\vim\vim81
+ mkdir runtime\lang\ja\LC_MESSAGES
+ msgfmt -o runtime\lang\ja\LC_MESSAGES\vim.mo src\po\ja.po
+
+
+WHEN THERE IS A MISTAKE
+
+If you find there is a mistake in one of the translations, please report this
+to the maintainer of the translation. His/her E-mail address is in the
+comments at the start of the file. You can also see this with the ":messages"
+command in Vim when the translation is being used.
+
+
+CREATING A NEW PO FILE
+
+We will use "xx.po" as an example here, replace "xx" with the name of your
+language.
+
+- Edit Makefile to add xx to LANGUAGES and xx.mo to MOFILES.
+- If you haven't done so already, run ./configure in the top vim directory
+ (i.e. go up two directories) and then come back here afterwards.
+- Execute these commands:
+ % make vim.pot
+ % msginit -l xx
+ % rm vim.pot
+ The first command will generate a vim.pot file which is used by msginit to
+ generate a correct xx.po file. After that vim.pot is not needed.
+- The remaining work is like updating, see the next section.
+
+
+UPDATING A PO FILE
+
+If you are the maintainer of a .po file, this is how you update the file. We
+will use "xx.po" as an example here, replace "xx" with the name of your
+language.
+
+(1) Add new and changed messages from the Vim sources:
+
+ make xx
+
+ This will extract all the strings from Vim and merge them in with the
+ existing translations. Requires the GNU gettext utilities.
+ Your original xx.po file will be copied to xx.po.orig
+
+ -- After you do this, you MUST do the next three steps! --
+
+(2) Translate
+ See the gettext documentation on how to do this. You can also find
+ examples in the other po files. You can use "gF" on the file name to see
+ the context of the message.
+ Search the po file for items that require translation:
+
+ /fuzzy\|^msgstr ""\(\n"\)\@!
+
+ Remove the "#, fuzzy" line after adding the translation.
+
+ There is one special message:
+ msgid "Messages maintainer: Bram Moolenaar <Bram@vim.org>"
+ You should include your name and E-mail address instead, for example:
+ msgstr "Berichten übersetzt bei: John Doe <john@doe.org>"
+
+(3) Remove unused messages (optional)
+ Remove messages that have been marked as obsolete.
+ Such messages start with "#~".
+
+ The cleanup script will also do that (see next step).
+
+(4) Clean up
+ This is very important to make sure the translation works on all systems.
+ Comment-out all non-translated strings. There are two types:
+ - items marked with "#, fuzzy"
+ - items with an empty msgstr
+ You can do this with the cleanup.vim script:
+
+ :source cleanup.vim
+
+ Background: on Solaris an empty msgstr results in an empty message; GNU
+ gettext ignores empty strings and items marked with "#, fuzzy".
+
+ This also removes the line numbers from the file, so that patches are not
+ messed up by changes in line numbers and show the actual changes in the
+ text.
+
+(5) Check:
+
+ While editing the .po file:
+ :source check.vim
+
+ From the command line:
+ vim -S check.vim xx.po
+ make xx.mo
+
+ Look out for syntax errors and fix them.
+
+(6) Local tryout:
+ Vim normally picks up the .mo files from:
+ $VIMRUNTIME/lang/{lang}/LC_MESSAGES/vim.mo
+ To try out the messages with Vim use:
+ make tryoutinstall
+ And run Vim with $VIMRUNTIME set to ../runtime
+
+
+USING GETTEXT WITHOUT ICONV
+
+When using gettext which doesn't support iconv, the encoding of the .mo file
+must match your active encoding. For that you must convert and change
+encoding of *.po file in advance of generating the *.mo file. For example, to
+convert ja.po to EUC-JP (supposed as your system encoding):
+
+(1) Convert the file encoding:
+
+ mv ja.po ja.po.orig
+ iconv -f utf-8 -t euc-jp ja.po.orig > ja.po
+
+(2) Rewrite charset declaration in the file:
+
+ Open ja.po find this line:
+ "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8\n"
+ You should change "charset" like this:
+ "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=euc-jp\n"
+
+There are examples in the Makefile for the conversions already supported.