Feb 02

gettext – .po vs .pot

By Kevin Hagel PHP, Programming No Comments »

What is the difference between a .po and .pot file?

Here’s a quote from the GNU gettext utilities page:

After preparing the sources, the programmer creates a PO template file. This section explains how to use xgettext for this purpose.

xgettext creates a file named domainname.po. You should then rename it to domainname.pot. (Why doesn’t xgettext create it under the name domainname.pot right away? The answer is: for historical reasons. When xgettext was specified, the distinction between a PO file and PO file template was fuzzy, and the suffix ‘.pot’ wasn’t in use at that time.)

So that’s it. It’s the same file, with a different name. Just thought I’d mention that, considering how much time I pissed off trying to find the answer!

[edit]
It looks like Wordpress sees this a little differently. the POT file, the “PO” Template, is the raw output from the xgettext, untranslated. the PO file is the text-editable and edited pot file with the translations. the MO file is built with msgfmt (among others) and is what is actually used by php’s gettext.

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Jan 29

Internationalization, Localization, gettext, php – a beginning.

By Kevin Hagel PHP, Programming 1 Comment »

I’m beginning a new effort these days, that of internationalisation and localisation of the php coding I’ve been doing lately.

GNU ‘gettext’ Utilities

These docs for gettext are C-oriented, but the associated tools such as xgettext are easily used by PHP, so let’s not get too excited about the C.
And I’m going to assume you have installed GNU’s gettext on your system.  I’m pretty sure it arrives by default with your ubuntu or other linux installation.  Mac and Windows you’re going to have to find for yourself :-)

Edited:  download GetText for Windows here

There’s also a lot of emacs crap in this doc, which I’m also going to ignore.  We’re going to use tools like poedit, gtranslator for what we need … coming posts.

on my ubuntu 9.10 box the following command installs the php-gettext stuff in /usr/share/php/php-gettext

sudo apt-get install php-gettext

and includes these three files:

  • gettext.inc
  • gettext.php
  • streams.php

I’m not going to deal with the internals of these files here in this post.

What I do is copy these into my working project somewhere, say in a subdirectory named “library”, “lib”, “i18n” … etc. I’m going to call it ./library/i18n just for this.

.po, .pot, .mo files – what are these?

http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html#Files

That’s about all for now, sorry I couldn’t be more helpful in this post.  This is just the setup stuff I’ve done for my new entry into this world of Internationalisation (i18n), Localisation (l10n), and Native Language Support (NLS) — see Concepts.

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Dec 12

Plugin Review: Code Colorer

By Kevin Hagel Wordpress No Comments »

Code Colorer

I used WP-SyntaxHighlighter, I tried some others, but the simplest and most expedient plugin I found for highlighting code in my blogs comes from Dmytro Shteflyuk’s Code Colorer.
Like most of them it’s based on the Geshi Generic Syntax Highlighter … much easier syntax.

I recommend this one for bloggers who wish to include code in their posts.

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Dec 11

Wordpress plugins don’t commonly use classes, why?

By Kevin Hagel PHP, Wordpress 2 Comments »

I’m learning how to write wordpress plugins, I’ve said that before here in my blog.  One of the ways I’m doing it is by downloading/installing existing plugins I see out there which may be interesting to me – they provide actions and capabilities to do things I want my plugin(s) to do … on a more general scale.

One thing I have noticed – almost all of these plugin authors do NOT use classes in their design.  Their .php files are full of functions, most of the time written without the

if (!function_exists('my_function')) {
  function my_function() {
    // and so on
  }
}

or

if (!function_exists('my_function')) :
  function my_function() {
    // and so on
  }
}
endif;

How do they expect to avoid naming collisions?  If they have to have a function by a certain name which probably exist in some other plugin developer’s file somewhere, then even if they use this !function_exists business they’ll end up getting the other author’s behavior for that function.

Why don’t these people just use classes! I know I’m coming at this from the java world where you have to use classes for everything, and there’s packaging to avoid naming collisions, but still – this seems like an obvious question to me. Do the modern php programmers have no experience with a real class-oriented language?

Here’s a silly example I’m doing. I have a plugin I’m developing to allow Zlatina’s web administrators to deal with their database of students and contacts. It’s called Bcc DBManager.
I created a subdirectory wp-content/plugins/bcc-dbmanager, with a file named bcc-dbmanager.php … duh. I want to hook into the activate_${plugin} (see this link for an explanation of that). Here’s a partial …

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Bcc DBManager
Description: Blah blah
*/
$bccDBManager = new BCC_DBmanager();
add_action('activate_bcc-dbmanager/bcc-dbmanager.php',                  
         array(&$bccDBManager,'_activate'));

class BCC_DBmanager {  
  function _activate()  {    
    // do stuff    
    $this->very_common_function_name();
    // or this way
    BCC_DBmanager::very_common_function_name();
  }
  ## function with a very common name
  function very_common_function_name() {
    // do stuff
  }
}
?>

How hard is that? I certainly don’t know much about plugin development at this point. But I would have to describe the use of functions rather than class instances and methods as Code Smell.

[Edit] Since I wrote this post I found this link on Nerdaphernalia: Use Classes in your WordPress plugins to increase code portability and reduce name conflicts

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Dec 04

ubuntu 9.10 apache2 php5 How to get apache to see index.php first

By Kevin Hagel PHP, Programming, Uncategorized 1 Comment »

After you’ve installed apach2, php5, mysql, etc, you test it with http://localhost and all you get is this “It Works!” crap.  You can actually create an index.php page that looks like:

<?php
  phpinfo();
?>

and you can actually type in http://localhost/index.php and get your phpinfo page coming out.  But it seems nowhere in the docs can you find out how to get apache2 to recognize index.php as the first page to deliver.

So, I found out where, finally.  In your WAMP environment there’s only the http.conf file, you look for the DirectoryIndex, and move index.php or insert “index.php” to the front of the line.  In this ubuntu 9.10 LAMP setup, where the hell is the file?

/etc/apache2/mods-available/dir.conf

That’s where it is.  open the file, it looks like this after your normal lamp setup in this environment

<ifmodule mod_dir.c>
 DirectoryIndex index.html index.cgi index.pl index.php index.xhtml index.htm
</ifmodule>

Notice the “index.php” somewhere in the DirectoryIndex list … move that to the front of the list as in

<ifmodule mod_dir.c>
 DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.cgi index.pl index.xhtml index.htm
</ifmodule>
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Nov 28

Configuring NetBeans Project For WordPress

By Kevin Hagel PHP, Programming, Wordpress 3 Comments »

ConfiguringNetBeansProjectForWordPress
Since I am working on wordpress plugins and themes, using a NetBeans environment on Ubuntu 9.10 … I just thought I’d pass along that link.  You can use this setup to debug your wordpress project without affecting your actual wordpress blog on your website – of course, we’re assuming you have your own server with your own ip address … whether remote hosted or on a server in your own home.

WordPress Plugin Development: Beginner’s Guide

I also purchased this eBook, for €19.99

Now remember, you want to be developing on localhost if you can.  You can always upload your “finished” plugin to your site wherever it is.  I have a windows box for www.hagelnx.com, I have a linux box for developing my plugins.  Do NOT waste your time trying to develop on windows if you can help it.  The apache2-php-mysql .. LAMP setup for ubuntu, just as an example, works really well with apt-get installing all the modules you need.  All the config files are updated without your having to edit them, both php ini files and apache2 ini files.

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Nov 27

Wordpress iphone plugin experiment

By Kevin Hagel Wordpress No Comments »

I’m attempting to upload a photo from my iPhone in this post. This photo was taken in Nesebar during a visit there the previous weekend. Did it work?

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Nov 26

Linux, NetBeans, PHP … XDebug, Wordpress

By Kevin Hagel PHP, Programming, Wordpress 3 Comments »

So I've cranked up the linux box for sandbox development of wordpress themes and plugins.  Sounds interesting, doesn't it? Well, for a hard-core java programmer moving back into PHP doesn't immediately seem like a step up, but here we are, eh dear reader?  And this may be where the business is in Bulgaria these days …. Wordpress is a perfectly good Content Management System (CMS), and It's likely that skills in this CMS will prove useful in this country at this time. I installed NetBeans, the latest version.  Installed apache2, php, all that good stuff with apt-get and aptitutude.  And finally I went to http://netbeans.org/kb/docs/php/wordpress-screencast.html for a quick tutorial on how to setup a wordpress plugin project. Good stuff, eh?  Let's see where this goes. If you're interested, I can write a post on the setup procedures which got me here.  Just try and get XDebug and all this running on windows, pee-yew.

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Nov 25

Starting up the linux box

By Kevin Hagel Programming No Comments »

I have kubuntu installed on my linux box, I’m going to get another static ip address for it pretty soon for the hagelbg.com domain. I installed kubuntu last summer …. I think, but I recently insisted that it use the gnome desktop.

I installed a new dvd r/wr drive on my windows box … or rather a friend of ours Dimitar (Mitko) installed it for me :-)   It is good to know people who know hardware, I could not survive as a software developer on this planet without people like that.  It’s good to know that there are people like Mitko here in Bulgaria.

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Nov 17

Stop Forum Spam

By Kevin Hagel Programming, spam No Comments »

Do you ever wonder why your blog is receiving comments in Russian cyrillic?  Get the visitor maps plugin, and bookmark the stopforumspam.com site.   You can enter the commentor’s email address, the home website they claim, even their IP address – which you can see in the visitor maps plugin.  Every single one of these russian commentors shows up on the stopforumspam website, without exception.

These people, mostly from Prieli Latvia in my case, are trying to increase their SEO visibility by adding comments to our blogs.  Don’t let them.  I have my akismet spam filter set to mark all comments coming from the .ru domain as spam.

Akismet -

Personal Use API Keys

After installing the Akismet plug-in for WordPress or one of the third party Akismet implementations, you will need an API key to activate and use Akismet.

You can get a free API key by registering for a WordPress.com user account. The API key will be emailed to you after you register.

You can register with Akismet (wordpress.com actually) without having to sign up for a blog.  They will email to you an API key (a short string of numbers and letters), you configure your Akismet plugin with this.  It costs nothing, I have never received any email from Akismet nor have been bothered by them in any way.

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