<sect2 id="repository-usage-section-4-3" xreflabel="Graphic design" label="3.4.3">

    <title>Localization</title>

    <para>The localization work line exists to provide the translation

    messages required to produce content in different languages.

    Translation messages inside the repository are stored as portable

    objects (e.g., .po, .pot) and machine objects (.mo) under

    @file{trunk/Locales} directory structure.</para>

    <para>The procedure used to localize content is taken from

    @command{gettext} standard specification.  Basically, translatable

    strings are retrived from source files in order to create portable

    objects and machine objects for them.  These portable objects are

    editable files that contain the information used by translators to

    localize the translatable strings retrived from source files. On

    the other hand, machine objects are produced to be machine-redable

    only, as its name implies, and are produced from portable

    objects.</para>

    <para>Since @command{gettext} needs to extract translatable

    strings form source files in order to let translators to localize

    them, we are limitted to use source files supported by

    @command{gettext} program.  This is not a limitation at all since

    @command{gettext} supports most popular programming laguages

    (e.g., C, C++, Java, Bash, Python, Perl, PHP and GNU Awk just to

    mention a few ones). Nevertheless, formats like SVG, XHTML and

    Docbook don't figure as supported formats in the list of

    @command{gettext} supported source files.</para>

    <para>To translate XML based source files like SVG, XHTML and

    Docbook we use the @command{xml2po} program instead.  The

    @command{xml2po} comes with the @file{gnome-doc-utils} package and

    retrives translatable strings from one XML file to produce

    portable objects for them.</para>

    <note> <para>Portable objects produced by @command{xml2po} have

    the same format that portable objects produced by

    @command{gettext}. This make the localization process quite

    consistent from translators' point of view.  No matter what the

    source file be, the translator will always face the same

    translation file format (i.e., the portable object format).</para>

    </note>

    <para>With the portable object in place, the @command{xml2po}

    program is used again to create the final translated XML, just

    with the same definition of the source file where translatable

    strings were taken from (e.g., if we extract translatable strings

    from a SVG file, as result we get the same SVG file but with

    translatable strings already localized ---obviously, for this to

    happen translators need to localize translatable strings inside

    the portable object first, localization won't appear as art of

    magic---).  When using @command{xml2po}, the machine object is

    used as temporal file to produce the final translated XML

    file.</para>

    <tip><para>If you want to have your content localized inside

    CentOS Artwork Repository be sure to use source files supported

    either by @command{gettext} or @command{xml2po}

    programs.</para></tip>

    <para>@xref{Directories trunk Locales}, for more

    information.</para>

</sect2>