Is your favorite application possible to translate? If the developers used the GNU gettext library, yes, with poEdit or similar editor. Wordpress is an example.

To translate you do not have to be able to code, but of course you have to know the language well. So dont be afraid to try! :)

Step 1, the POT
This is a step which should already have been taken care of by the developer. poEdit scans the files in a catalog for translatable strings to create a file named .pot (Portable Object Template). If there is a .pot-file, use it to create a .po for your language.

Step 2, the PO
The .po-file (Portable Object) is the one you will work with, it contains the strings and values for the translation. The naming of files can be different between projects. For example, a common way to make a swedish translation: choose to open the POT and generate a .po-file, save as sv_SE.po for the swedish language.

Step 3, the MO
When you translate the strings you have the original text to the left, and the translation to the right. Mark the word you want to translate and fill in the form at the bottom. Each time the file is saved, a .mo (Machine Object) file is generated. It is this file the webbapplication will use.

Some more reading on this subject:

• Translating Wordpress
• Translating Wordpress plugins and themes

I have made the first submit to Wordpress plugin database with my Random Post Box plugin. It’s nice to see that they are using Subversion, my favorite versioning-system :)

If you want to see an example of the plugin in use, check out below the first post on Retrocamera.net.

Download Random Post Box from Wordpress.org
See the plugin in use on Retrocamera.net (the little box below the first post).

Random Post Box is a Wordpress plugin. It will let you place a box (div) anywhere on your blog, with templatetag or shortcode, and load random posts with an interval and fade effect. It uses jQuery (Ajax) which means that the content is loaded without loading the rest of the page. The timing can be controlled in the Admin Options-panel.

The template tag is <?php random_post_box(); ?>. You can also use the shortcode [random-post-box] in a page or post.

Features

• Insert placeholder with template tag
• Insert placeholder with shortcode
• Set time for displaying the post
• Set times for fade in and fade out affect
• Exclude or include posts by category
• Exclude posts by age (in days)
• Use title only
• Use post excerpt or bodycontent
• Strip tags from body
• Show/hide post metadata
• Prepared for translation

Installation

The installation is like mosts plugins:

1. Download and extract the files
2. Upload `random-post-box` folder to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
3. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
4. Place `<?php random_post_box(); ?>` in your templates, or [random-post-box] in a page or post.

The install doesn’t touch the database much, it just adds one option post.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there an option to display several posts?
Not at the moment, but it might be included in future versions. It’s not recommended to use the
template tag several times on the same page.

How can I style the box?
The box is a div with id “random-post-box”, and the markup inside is quite similar to the
default theme.

The box changes size when loading a new post
You need to set the size to something static with CSS, or use some means to control the size. Use the id “random-post-box” as described
in the previous answer.

I have a confession about editors to make. I hate(!) auto-completion.

In theory it sounds great with suggestions and auto-features. In real life it’s an obstacle to overcome.
The plan is, I guess, to make me faster. But instead it slows me down. If I know what I’m going to write in a script I don’t get faster with popups and shit.

Can I tweak the auto-completion in most editors? Yes of course, but almost never enough. So I just either get more and more annoyed during the day, or I turn it off. The editor that gives me the complete control over this features gets my love.

I’m really starting to like it, but got stuck on how to make Netbeans use tabs for indention. Deselecting the option “Extend tabs to spaces” didn’t work for me, I still got those damn spaces (I hate indention by spaces).

I found the solution though, go to your “Options“-panel, choose the “Editor” page, select “Formatting” and set “Tab size” and “Number of spaces to indent” to the same size.

Update: More PHP’ers falling for Netbeans.

If you look in my second column I have started to make some lists to help you find your texteditor. There is lists for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows. If you think some editor is missing, please feel free to make suggestions. My plans are to review all of them, but that of course will take some time to finish ;)

I got some ideas from LinkedPHPers, a group on LinkedIn. There is a discussion going on, “What is the best free application that runs in Ubuntu 9.10 – the Karmic Koala for development of websites in PHP?” My own anser was Quanta Plus or Eclipse PDT for projects and gEdit for lighter/faster edits. But a lot of people mentioned Netbeans. So I’m giving Netbeans a try on my Ubuntu and my OS X machine.

A brief try today I like it, but I think the use of snippets/templates/palettes/macros (different names in different editors for the recycling of code) should be made easier. I like the way Quanta handles them, drag and drop to create but the option for more advanced edit. And stored in a common format like .txt. The whole idea with snippets is to speed up your coding, at least to me. But I still need to check further in Netbeans, as I said I only had a brief look today. So this is NOT a review … yet ;)

By the way you might have noticed I got some new pages up, “Free editors for OS X” and “Free texteditors for Linux”. I intend to continue with Windows editors soon, and the review them all.

Now you can get Freemind 0.9 on Xubuntu Linux (and OS X and Windows). Freemind is the free mindmapping software. I think it is great for planning and thinking sometimes. There is an old version in the Ubuntu repositories, but I had a hard time getting it to work and it couldn’t open the maps I made on my Mac or Windows (since they had later versions of the software).

I just downloaded freemind-bin-max-0.9.0_RC_6.zip and extracted, made freemind.sh executable and now I got a new version of this great little program :)

The image you see below is the editor Quanta Plus on Mac OS X. It is a port of KDE WebDev and is usually run on Linux. Since I’ve been working with it for a while I tought it would be nice to get it going on Apples Mac OS X too.

Macports
I began by installing MacPorts (an “an easy-to-use system for compiling, installing, and upgrading either command-line, X11 or Aqua based open-source software on the Mac OS X operating system”).

Before you install MacPorts be sure to have Apples X11 User/window environment (installed as default in OS X 10.5+) ans XCode Developer Tools.

The next step was to install the base for the K Desktop Environment (KDE3). This is done by opening the Terminal and write:

sudo port install kdebase3

The instal might take a while. Now for the programs. Install kdewebdev3, a webdeveloping package including Quanta Plus.

sudo port install kdewebdev3

Once again, the install can take some time so be patient. When it’s done you can find the apps in /opt/local/bin. Good to go!

I work a lot on an old Notebook, and today it got laptop hickups. Actually it all started years ago when the harddrive (IBM “deathstar” Deskstar) started giving “Non system disk” error. About a month ago I replaced it. Great. Happy days.

This morning when I arrived to work (2 hours late, due to error in the local traffic) I think it stopped working while I was writing to the disk, resulting in an filsystem error. I managed to fix is with the fsck from terminal, but it took a couple of hours more. Half a day gone and nothing done… but at least the laptop works again.