Locale::Maketext::Fuzzy - Maketext from already interpolated strings
This document describes version 0.02 of Locale::Maketext::Fuzzy.
package MyApp::L10N;
use base 'Locale::Maketext::Fuzzy'; # instead of Locale::Maketext
package MyApp::L10N::de;
use base 'MyApp::L10N';
our %Lexicon = (
# Exact match should always be preferred if possible
"0 camels were released."
=> "Exact match",
# Fuzzy match candidate
"[quant,_1,camel was,camels were] released."
=> "[quant,_1,Kamel wurde,Kamele wurden] freigegeben.",
# This could also match fuzzily, but is less preferred
"[_2] released[_1]"
=> "[_1][_2] ist frei[_1]",
);
package main;
my $lh = MyApp::L10N->get_handle('de');
# All ->maketext calls below will become ->maketext_fuzzy instead
$lh->override_maketext(1);
# This prints "Exact match"
print $lh->maketext('0 camels were released.');
# "1 Kamel wurde freigegeben." -- quant() gets 1
print $lh->maketext('1 camel was released.');
# "2 Kamele wurden freigegeben." -- quant() gets 2
print $lh->maketext('2 camels were released.');
# "3 Kamele wurden freigegeben." -- parameters are ignored
print $lh->maketext('3 released.');
# "4 Kamele wurden freigegeben." -- normal usage
print $lh->maketext('[*,_1,camel was,camels were] released.', 4);
# "!Perl ist frei!" -- matches the broader one
# Note that the sequence ([_2] before [_1]) is preserved
print $lh->maketext('Perl released!');
This module is a subclass of Locale::Maketext, with additional
support for localizing messages that already contains interpolated
variables. This is most useful when the messages are returned by
external modules -- for example, to match dir: command not found
against [_1]: command not found.
Of course, this module is also useful if you're simply too lazy to use the
$lh->maketext("[quant,_1,file,files] deleted.", $count);
syntax, but wish to write
$lh->maketext_fuzzy("$count files deleted");
instead, and have the correct plural form figured out automatically.
If maketext_fuzzy seems too long to type for you, this module
also provides a override_maketext method to turn all maketext
calls into maketext_fuzzy calls.
That method takes exactly the same arguments as the maketext method
of Locale::Maketext.
If key is found in lexicons, it is applied in the same way as
maketext. Otherwise, it looks at all lexicon entries that could
possibly yield key, by turning [...] sequences into (.*?) and
match the resulting regular expression against key.
Once it finds all candidate entries, the longest one replaces the
key for the real maketext call. Variables matched by its bracket
sequences ($1, $2...) are placed before parameters; the order
of variables in the matched entry are correctly preserved.
For example, if the matched entry in %Lexicon is Test [_1],
this call:
$fh->maketext_fuzzy("Test string", "param");
is equivalent to this:
$fh->maketext("Test [_1]", "string", "param");
However, most of the time you won't need to supply parameters to
a maketext_fuzzy call, since all parameters are already interpolated
into the string.
If flag is true, this accessor method turns $lh->maketext
into an alias for $lh->maketext_fuzzy, so all consecutive
maketext calls in the $lh's packages are automatically fuzzy.
A false flag restores the original behaviour. If the flag is not
specified, returns the current status of override; the default is
0 (no overriding).
Note that this call only modifies the symbol table of the language
class that $lh belongs to, so other languages are not affected.
If you want to override all language handles in a certain application,
try this:
MyApp::L10N->override_maketext(1);
"[quant,_1,file] deleted" won't match "3 files deleted";
you'll have to write "[quant,_1,file,files] deleted" instead, or
simply use "[_1] file deleted" as the lexicon key and put the correct
plural form handling into the corresponding value.
Locale::Maketext::Lexicon's Tie
backend, all keys would be iterated over each time a fuzzy match is
performed, and may cause serious speed penalty. Patches welcome.
Locale::Maketext, Locale::Maketext::Lexicon
This particular module was written to facilitate an auto-extraction
layer for Slashcode's Template Toolkit provider, based on
HTML::Parser and Template::Parser. It would work like this:
Input | <B>from the [% story.dept %] dept.</B>
Output| <B>[%|loc( story.dept )%]from the [_1] dept.[%END%]</B>
Now, this layer suffers from the same linguistic problems as an
ordinary Msgcat or Gettext framework does -- what if we want
to make ordinates from [% story.dept %] (i.e. from the 3rd dept.),
or expand the dept. to department / departments?
The same problem occurred in RT's web interface, where it had to
localize messages returned by external modules, which may already
contain interpolated variables, e.g. "Successfully deleted 7
ticket(s) in 'c:\temp'.".
Since I didn't have the time to refactor DBI and DBI::SearchBuilder,
I devised a loc_match method to pre-process their messages into one
of the candidate strings, then applied the matched string to maketext.
Afterwards, I realized that instead of preparing a set of candidate
strings, I could actually use the original lexicon file (i.e. PO files
via Locale::Maketext::Lexicon) to match against. This is how
Locale::Maketext::Fuzzy was born.
Autrijus Tang <autrijus@autrijus.org>
Copyright 2002 by Autrijus Tang <autrijus@autrijus.org>.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.