select translation by UI

[Markus Elfring]

A lot of translations are offered by the installation wizard. When can they
be selected in the preferences dialog or a menu in the application?
Would you like to support that the language/locale can be switched on the
fly?
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Translation_information

[Luca Bruno (lucab)]

Inkscape UI language depends on your OS configuration to be homogeneous with the rest of the environment.
If you can't find how to change that, please check this FAQ item:
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/FAQ#I_am_working_on_a_machine_with_operating_system_xxx_which_has_default_language_yyy_set.2C_but_I_want_to_work_with_Inkscape_menus_in_language_zzz_.28most_likely_English.29.2C_how_can_I_set_this.3F

I'd keep it in this way. I really don't like another locale switch just for Inkscape, as this work doesn't pertain to each single app.
Moreover, AFAIK the gettext library can't handle a locale change on the fly, but the application would have to be restarted for the setting to be applied.

[Markus Elfring (elfring)]

I imagine more convenience in language selection (e.g. for testing purposes) than configuration of the environment variable "LANG" or "LANGUAGE" in shell scripts. The torrent tool "Azureus" provides such an easy way, for example.

[wradgio (wradgio)]

For example on a Mac OS X version, it's very hard to change language. For example I was not able to do that even using the info from the FAQ and i still have not find any solution how to do it. I'm writing article about Inkscape for one small Mac server and i'm sure, that Inkscape newbies from Mac comunity would like to enjoy to learn basics in their native language, like their friends from Windows and Linux can.

[Peter Clifton (pcjc2)]

You can progmatically change the LANGUAGE variable.

Thanks to gcc caching translations, this update won't take effect until you "trick" / "persuede" it to think you've changed message catalogs or similar.

It is possible (on my machine at least, with GNU gettext) to do this by resetting textdomain (DOMAIN); (even if you just set it to the same value). The libintl sources show this is intended as a way to force a reload, even if I couldn't find it documented outside that.

As for redrawing everything after you've changed the gettext translations, that for me seems like the harder problem.

BTW.. I'm probably of the opinion that language controls in the apps are bad. There should be language controls on the desktop environment which are picked up automagically. (Doesn't excuse gettext for lacking good API to change on the fly though).

[Alexandre Prokoudine (alexandre-prokoudine)]

Gettext is not quite relevant here. Audacity has a UI language switcher in Preferences on all supported platforms and it does use gettext :)

[theAdib (theadib)]

Hi folks, as a personal christmas present I commited revision 20418 that adds the possibility to set UI language in the preferences dialogue :-)

The dialogue lists all languages Inkscape is translated into.

I will change the status from status/wishlist. pls reopen if necesary.
Any feedback welcome.

Adib.

[theAdib (theadib)]

put to "fix released" as the code is for a long time in the code basis. Adib.