c2local

Short:        V1.0, automatic localization for C/C++ sourcecodes
Author:       meixner@rbg.informatik.th-darmstadt.de (Matthias Meixner)
Uploader:     meixner rbg informatik th-darmstadt de (Matthias Meixner)
Architecture: m68k-amigaos


                           Background
                           ----------
From version 2.1 of the Amiga operatingsystem on, it is possible to generate
programs that support more than one language. One language is compiled into
the program and the other languages are stored in the so called catalogs.
The operatingsystem determines the language on runtime and loads the corres-
ponding catalog. If you want to write a program that supports catalogs, you
must replace all strings by a localizeable version, since the strings are not
the same in all languages. The goal of C2Local was to allow the programmer to
continue programming in the old way, using normal strings, since such source-
code is more readable, and then automatically generate a localized version of
this program. C2Local allows this for nearly all C and C++ sourcecodes. Pro-
grams like CatComp generate sourcecode to access localized strings, but the
programmer must adapt his program by hand. "Localize" is able to patch source-
codes to support locale.library, but it leaves many cases, which cannot be
automatically localized, e.g. the static initialization of structures. Now
C2Local can even localize most of these cases. There is only one exception:
the static initialization of char-arrays.

e.g.

   char a[]="test";

cannot be localized automatically, but the more important case

   char *a="test"

can be localized using C2Local. This latter case is far more often used, e.g.
it is required for static initialization of menus. Therefore one can localize
menus or gadgets without any problems using C2Local.