lua-xgettext
============

Copyright (c) Tuomo Valkonen 2006

tuomov at iki.fi


About
-----

`lua-xgettext` is a small program for extracting marked strings from
Lua code, for translation to other languages. It is in function
similar to GNU `xgettext`, but far more primitive; it just extracts
the strings and prints them out, without any additional information.
It was written, because GNU `xgettext` does not support Lua at the
time of writing this README, and because implementing a Lua parser in
the Parsec parser combinator library for Haskell was far more fun
than the pain of writing one in C for GNU `xgettext`. The available
Lua libraries for examining compiled Lua code etc. also didn't seem
that comfortable to use, as the most appropriate of them, `ltokens`,
wasn't available for Lua 5.1, and I'm not that comfortable depending
on software that hasn't been "properly" packaged and distributed 
and maintained -- unless it's written by me :).


Compiling and installing
------------------------

Edit Makefile to change installation `PREFIX`, if need be, and the
options to the GHC Haskell compiler, which you will need to build
this program. (Another Haskell compiler might also work, but you
would then have to write a Makefile that doesn't rely on GHC's
`--make` functionality.) Then follow the usual `make` followed by
`make install` routine.


Usage
-----

See `lua-xgettext --help`. Similarly to GNU `xgettext`, if no keyword
(function name) is explicitly given, it looks for strings in calls to
the function `_` (underscore). Only the first parameter is considered
a translatable string, although the other parameters are examined for
other translation calls. `lua-xgettext` also supports the `..`
concatenation operator, so calls like

        _("This string" .. " is translatable")

are understood to contain the translatable strings "This string is
translatable", facilitating splitting the string on multiple lines
without using the multi-line string syntax of Lua.


Trivia
------

The name of the included Lua parser, Kuu, is Finnish for Lua,
which is Portuguese for Moon.