Internationalization toolkit based on GNU gettext

[martinstut]

While developing an AutoIt-based application for an international christian organization, the need came up to provide this application for users of different native languages. So MsgBox(64, "App Title", "Please reboot your computer to complete the process.") is no longer good enough. The application needs to present its user interface in a different language, depending on the user’s preference.

Of course there are many approaches to implement this. But however you do it, you will need two different toolkits: one for the translator and one for the programmer.

The programmer will need something to define the translatable strings or, preferably, extract them from the source code.
The translator will need something to edit the translation.
The programmer will need something to incorporate the translation in to the program.

And all of this should be repeatable with little effort when a few strings in the program change – don’t make the translator retranslate everything if you just add two strings for a new little feature of your program.

To avoid reinventing the wheel, I decided to go the route many large open source projects go: gettext.

So I've built a small toolkit utilizing the style and some tools of GNU gettext to create AutoIt applications that can be translated into any language by just adding a corresponding [language].po file.

I've explained the reasoning and overview in https://martinstutenglish.wordpress.com/2016/06/10/internationalizing-autoit-applications-by-something-similar-to-gnu-gettext/

Technical details and downloadable files, including a very small example application, are in https://github.com/martinstut/gettext_au3 (updated as I improve the toolkit), most of which is also contained in the attached ZIP file.

Hopefully this helps you to internationalize your own applications.

gettext_au3-20160617.zip