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  • Jehan's avatar
    Issue #8124: plug-in localization now totally moved plug-in side. · 81b569cb
    Jehan authored
    Plug-in localization was always partially plug-in side, especially for
    things like custom GUI. But labels or blurb in GIMP (such as in menus or
    action search) were localizing GIMP side.
    
    It had many drawbacks:
    
    - To get menu localization, a plug-in had to set up gettext, even though
      they might want to use something else for their GUI (after all, giving
      facilities for gettext is a good idea, but there is no reason to force
      using this system).
    - There was a complex internal system passing the localization domain
      name, as well as the catalog file system path to core, then through
      various classes which we can now get rid of.
    - There could be domain name clashes, if 2 plug-ins were to use the same
      i18n domain name. This was handled in now removed functions
      gimp_plug_in_manager_get_locale_domains() by simply keeping a unique
      one (and gimp_plug_in_manager_bind_text_domains() would just bind the
      domain to the kept directory). In other words, one of the duplicate
      plug-ins would use the wrong catalog. We could try to make the whole
      thing more complicated or try to forbid plug-ins to use any random
      name (in particular made easier with the new extension wrapper). But
      anyway this whole issue doesn't happen anymore if localization is
      fully made plug-in side, so why bother?
    
    I tried to evaluate the advantages of the core-side localization of
    plug-in labels/blurbs and could only find one theoretical: if we wanted
    to keep access to the original English text. This could be useful
    (theoretically) if we wanted to search (e.g. in the action search) in
    both localized and English text; or if we wanted to be able to swap
    easily en/l10n text in a UI without reload. But even if we were to ever
    do this, it would only be possible for plug-ins (GEGL operations in
    particular are localized GEGL-side), so it lacks consistency. And it's
    unsure why special-casing English should really make sense for other
    language natives who want text in their lang, and search in their lang.
    They don't necessarily care about original.
    
    So in the end, I decided to simplify the whole thing, make localization
    of plug-ins a plug-in side thing. Core will only receive translated text
    and that's it. It cuts a lot of code out of the core, simplify runtime
    processing and make plug-in creation simpler to understand.
    
    The only think I still want to look at is how exactly menu paths are
    translated right now. Note that it still works, but it's possible that
    some things may be worth improving/simplifying on this side too.
    81b569cb