Should we drop gettext before it's too late?

[mbarleon]

Gettext is currently used for i18n. The problem is that it is not well supported by vcpkg, and it has to be installed on the host as a separate package (which is not ideal). We could replace it by a custom i18n implementation based on JSON quite easily, especially since we don't use it that much yet.

[RaphaelPetrequin]

Gettext is currently used for i18n. The problem is that it is not well supported by vcpkg, and it has to be installed on the host as a separate package (which is not ideal). We could replace it by a custom i18n implementation based on JSON quite easily, especially since we don't use it that much yet.

I guess we can, its only purpose was to provide different language, so if we drop it we remove the traduction flow. We can search for an alternative though.

[mbarleon]

My proposal is to use a JSON parser, and to create language based dictionaries. We could have something like:
en.json

{
  "settings": {
     "scale": "Scale",
     "units": "Units"
  }
}

fr.json

{
  "settings": {
     "scale": "Échelle",
     "units": "Unités"
  }
}

Then we could build a function similar to the current _ macro that would resolve translation keys such as settings.scale. Its prototype could be

std::string getStringFromDictionary(const std::string &key);

Internally, we may load the entire JSON file on startup into a std::unordered_map to avoid I/O overhead every time we need a translated string. The map could also be refreshed at runtime if the user changes language.

We already have a JSON parser, so the changes would be minimal and won't introduce any new dependencies.

Let me know if you want me to build a prototype.

[RaphaelPetrequin]

Yes, for a current project I am working with .jsonc, and created a get_text function that would search the right translation for a key. It works, I don't know if it is the cleanest, but we are not writting a book so it's a fine and easy way to stop using gettext.

[mbarleon]

I made a prototype in the branch feat/custom-translation

[RaphaelPetrequin]

So, can we close the discussion ?