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.
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