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FlexCat V1.2 Documentation ************************** This file describes the Usage of FlexCat V1.2, a program which generates catalogs and the source to handle them. FlexCat works similar to CatComp and KitCat, but differs in generating any source you want. This is done by using the so called Source descriptions, which are a template for the code to generate. They can be edited and hence adapted to any programming language and individual needs. (Hopefully!) Copyright and other legal stuff ******************************* Copyright (C) 1993 Jochen Wiedmann Am Eisteich 9 72555 Metzingen (Deutschland) Tel. 07123 / 14881 Internet: wiedmann@mailserv.zdv.uni-tuebingen.de Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim and modified copies of this documentation and the program FlexCat following the terms of the "GNU General Public License" provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies and the "GNU General Public License" (in the file COPYING) is distributed as well. The author gives absolutely no warranty that the program described in this documentation and the results produced by it are correct. The author cannot be held responsible for any damage resulting from the use of this software. Survey ****** Since Workbench 2.1 the Amiga offers a rather pleasant system of using programs in different languages: The locale.library. (This is called localizing, that's what the name's for.) The idea is simple: You select a language, the english in most cases and write your program in the same manner as you did without localizing, except that constant strings are replaced by certain function calls. Another function call makes it possible that the user selects another language when the program starts. (The latter function call loads an external file, the so called catalog and makes the former to read the strings from the catalog instead of using the predefined strings.) These catalogs are independent from the program. All you need to do for adding another language is to create a new catalog file and this is possible at any time without changing the program. But there are additional tasks for the programmer: He needs to create the catalogs, the predefined strings and some source to handle them all. (The functions that are mentioned above.) FlexCat is designed to make this in an easy and nearly automatic manner without losing flexibility especially in creating the source. An example should make this clear: Lets assume that we want to write a HelloLocalWorld.c. Our final program will look like this: #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <HelloLocalWorld_Cat.h> /* You must include this! */ #include <clib/exec_protos.h> struct Library *LocaleBase; void main(int argc, char *argv[]) { /* Open the library for yourself, even if the compiler supports */ /* automatic opening. NO exit, if OpenLibrary fails: */ /* We use the builtin strings in that case. */ LocaleBase = OpenLibrary("locale.library", 38); OpenHelloLocalWorldCatalog(NULL, NULL); printf("%s\n", GetHelloLocalWorldString(msgHello)); CloseHelloLocalWorldCatalog(); if (LocaleBase) CloseLibrary(LocaleBase); } Note that this is quite the same as the original HelloWorld.c except for replacing the string "Hello, world!" by a function call and some minor initializing stuff. The above program uses a constant msgHello. A call to the functon GetHelloLocalWorldString replaces this by the respective string. These constants and strings are defined in a so called Catalog description file. (see Catalog description. You always start by creating such a file called HelloLocalWorld.cd, which could look like this: ; Comments ar eallowed, of course! Each line beginning with a ; semicolon is assumed to be a comment ; ; The language of the builtin strings: #language english ; ; The catalog version, used for a call to Locale/OpenCatalog(). ; This is different to Exec/OpenLibrary(): 0 means any catalog ; version, other numbers must match exactly! #version 0 ; ; This defines a string and the ID which allows to use it. ; The number 4 says, that this string must not be shorter than ; 4 characters. msgHello (/4/) Hello, world! By using FlexCat you create another two files from the catalog description: The include file HelloLocalWorld_Cat.h defines the constants and the HelloLocalWorld_Cat.c contains an array of strings and the functions OpenHelloLocalWorldCatalog(), GetHelloLocalWorldString() and CloseHelloLocalWorldCatalog. You don't need to know how they look, just use them. Especially you don't need to know anything about Locale.library! However, you might be interested, how these files look or even more, you might want them changed. This is the difference between FlexCat and other catalog generators: FlexCat is not forced to use a special builtin format for creating these files. Instead it uses external files, so called Source descriptions. This makes it possible, for example, to allow using catalogs with AmigaDOS 2.0. see Source description. If you use the source descriptions from the FlexCat distribution you can create the source files with the following commands: FlexCat HelloLocalWorld.cd HelloLocalWorld_Cat.c=C_c_V21 FlexCat HelloLocalWorld.cd HelloLocalWorld_Cat.h=C_h.sd When your program is ready you use FlexCat again to create so called Catalog translation files, one for each language you would like to support. (Except english, which is builtin.) See Catalog translation. Lets create a german catalog translation: FlexCat HelloLocalWorld.cd NEWCTFILE Deutsch.ct This file would no look as follows: ## version ## language ## codeset 0 ; Comments ar eallowed, of course! Each line beginning with a ; semicolon is assumed to be a comment ; ; The language of the builtin strings: ; ; The catalog version, used for a call to Locale/OpenCatalog(). ; This is different to Exec/OpenLibrary(): 0 means any catalog ; version, other numbers must match exactly! ; ; This defines a string and the ID which allows to use it. ; The number 4 says, that this string must not be shorter than ; 4 characters. msgHello ;Hello, world! You see, it looks much like the catalog descriptions. FlexCat includes the comments from the catalog description, even where it is meaningless: Note the comment on the string length which shouldn't appear here as these informations must be in the catalog description only. All you have to do now is to fill in the informations on the version (a typical version string like $VER: Deutsch.catalog 1.0 (11.03.94) is expected), the language of the catalog translation (Deutsch for german here), the codeset (which should always be 0 for now, see Locale/OpenCatalog() for details) and of course the strings itself. FlexCat includes the original strings as comments, so you always know what to fill in. Finally you create the catalogs with commands like FlexCat HelloLocalWorld.cd Deutsch.ct CATALOG Deutsch.catalog Note, that you don't need the program itself or the source files created with FlexCat for the catalogs! You can create new catalogs at any time. It is usual to supply distributions with a file NewCatalog.ct, so users can create own catalogs. But what happens if you change the program later? Just edit the catalog description and use FlexCat to update the catalog translations: FlexCat HelloLocalWorld.cd Deutsch.ct NEWCTFILE Deutsch.ct All you need to do now is to enter new strings if needed. Installation ************ FlexCat is written in pure Ansi-C (except for the localization), hence it should run on any Amiga and hopefully on other machines after recompiling. (The localizing is commented out in that case.) This holds for the created programs too: FlexCat is written using itself. All distributed source descriptions should create programs running on any Amiga and even any machine. (Of course you must ensure that the variable LocaleBase has the value NULL in the latter case.) Localizing, however, is possible beginning with Workbench 2.1 because the locale.library isn't available below. It is not impossible to offer localizing without the locale.library: The source description files C_c_V20.sd and C_h_V20.sd give an example, where the iffparse.library is used to replace the locale.library, if it is not available. This gives Localizing for Workbench 2.0. See C. Installing FlexCat is simple: Just copy the program to a directory in your search path and select a place for the source descriptions you need. (These are the files called something like xx_yy.sd, where xx is the programming language.) If you want to use FlexCat in another language than the english you need to copy the respective catalog files too. E.g. for the german language copy the file Catalogs/Deutsch/FlexCat.catalog to Locale:Catalogs/Deutsch/FlexCat.catalog or to PROGDIR:Catalogs/Deutsch/FlexCat.catalog, where PROGDIR: is FlexCat's program directory. See Using FlexCat source. Calling FlexCat from the CLI **************************** FlexCat is a CLI based program and doesn't operate from the workbench. It's calling syntax is FlexCat CDFILE/a,CTFILE,CATALOG/k,NEWCTFILE/k,SOURCES/m where the arguments mean CDFILE is the name of a catalog description to be read. This is always needed. Please note, that the base name of the source description is created from it making this case significant. See Source description. CTFILE is the name of a catalog translation file to be read. This is needed for creating catalogs or for updating an old catalog translation file using the NEWCTFILE argument: FlexCat reads the old file and the catalog description and creates a new catalog translation file containing the old strings and possibly some empty lines for new strings. CATALOG is the name of a catalog file to be created. This argument requires giving CDFILE as well. NEWCTFILE is the name of a catalog translation file to create. FlexCat reads strings from CTFILE, if this is given, strings missing in the catalog translation are replaced by empty lines. (The new catalog translation will contain only empty lines as strings, if CTFILE is omitted.) SOURCES are the names of source files to be created. These shoud be given in the form source=template where source is the file to create and template is the name of a source description file to be scanned. For examples of command lines see Survey. Catalog description files ************************* A catalog description file contains four kinds of lines. Comment lines Any line beginning with a semicolon is assumed to be a comment line, hence ignored. (The string lines below are an exception. These may begin with a semicolon.) Command lines Any line beginning with a '#' (with the same exception as above) are assumed to be command lines. Possible commands are: #language <str> gives the programs default language, the language of the strings in the catalog description. Default is #language english. #version <num> gives the version number of catalogs to be opened. Note that this number must match exact and not be same or higher as in `Exec/OpenLibrary'. An exception is the number 0, which accepts any catalog. Default is #version 0. See Locale/OpenCatalog for further information on catalog language and version. #lengthbytes <num> Instructs FlexCat to put the given number of bytes before a string containing its length. The length is the number of bytes in the string without length bytes and a trailing NUL byte. (Catalog files and hence catalog strings will have a trailing NUL byte. This is not always true for the default strings, depending on the source description file.) <num> must be between 0 and sizeof(long)=4, Default is #lengthbytes 0. #basename <str> Sets the basename of the source description. See Source description. This overwrites the basename from the command line argument CDFILE. See Program start. Commands are case insensitive. Description lines declare a string. They look like IDSTR (id/minlen/maxlen) where IDSTR is a identifier (a string consisting of the characters a-z,A-Z and 0-9), id is a unique number (from now on called ID), minlen and maxlen are the strings minimum and maximum length, respectively. The latter three may be missing (but not the characters (//)!) in which case FlexCat chooses a number and makes no restrictions on the string length. Better don't use the ID's, if you don't need. The lines following are the String lines containing the string itself and nothing else. These may contain certain control characters beginning with a backslash: \b Backspace (Ascii 8) \c Control Sequence Introducer (Ascii 155) \e Escape (Ascii 27) \f Form Feed (Ascii 12) \g Display beep (Ascii 7) \n Line Feed, newline (Ascii 10) \r Carriage Return (Ascii 13) \t Tab (Ascii 9) \v Vertical tab (Ascii 11) \) The trailing bracket which is possibly needed as part of a (..) sequence, see Source description. \\ The backslash itself \xHH The character given by the ascii code HH, where HH are hex digits. \OOO The character given by the ascii code OOO, where OOO are octal digits. Finally a single backslash at the end of the line causes concatening the following line. This makes it possible to use strings of any length, FlexCat makes no assumptions on string length. A string is hence given by a description line and the following string line. Let's see an example: msgHello (/4/) Hello, this is english!\n The ID is missing here, so FlexCat chooses a suitable number. The number 4 instructs FlexCat, that the following string must not have less than four characters and it may be of any length. See the file FlexCat.cd for a further example. Catalog translation files ************************* Catalog translation files are very similar to catalog descriptions, except for other commands and having no informations on string ID and length. (These are taken from the catalog description.) Any string from the catalog description must be present (However, FlexCat omits writing strings into the catalog which are identical to the default string.) and no additional identifiers may occur. This is easy assured by using FlexCat to create new catalog translation files. See Survey. The commands allowed in catalog translations are: ##version <str> Gives the catalog version as AmigaDOS version string. Example: ##version $VER: Deutsch.ct 8.1 (27.09.93) The version number of this catalog is 8. Hence the catalog descriptions version number must be 0 or 8. ##language <str> The catalogs language. Of course this should be another language than the catalog descriptions language. The ##language and ##version commands must be present in a catalog translation. ##codeset <num> Currently not used, must be 0. This is the default value. The string from above looks like this in the catalog translation: msgHello Hallo, dies ist deutsch!\n See Deutsch.ct as further example of a catalog translation. Source description files ************************ This is the special part of FlexCat. Until now there is nothing that CatComp, KitCat and others don't offer too. The created source should make it easy, to use the catalogs without losing flexibility. Any programming language should be possible and any requirements should be satisfyable. This seems like a contradiction, but FlexCat's solution are the source description files containing a template of the source to be created. These are editable as the catalog description and translation files are, hence FlexCat can create any code. The source descriptions are searched for certain symbols which are replaced by certain values. Possible symbols are the backslash characters from above and additionally sequences beginning with a %. (This is well known for C programmers.) %b is the base name of the catalog description. See Program start. %v is the version number of the catalog description. Don't mix this up with the catalog version string from the catalog translation. %l is the catalog descriptions language. Please note, that this is inserted as a string. See %s below. below. %n is the number of strings in the catalog description. %% is the character % itself. But the most important thing are the following seqences. These represent the catalog strings in different ways. Lines containing one or more of these symbols are repeated for any String. %i is the identifier from the catalog description. %d is the strings ID. %s is the string itself; this will be inserted in a way depending on the programming language and can be controlled using the commands ##stringtype and ##shortstrings. %(...) inserts the text between the brackets for any string except the last. This is probably needed in Arrays, if the array entries should be separated by commas, but the last entry must not be followed by a comma. You can use %(,) in that case. Note that within the brackets there is no replacing of % sequences. Backslash sequences, however, are still allowed. The control sequences %l and %s create strings. But how strings look depends on the program language. That's why the source description allows command lines similar to the catalog translation. These must begin with the first character of the line and any command must have its own line. Possible commands are: ##shortstrings makes longer strings to be splitted on different lines. This is probably not always possible or not implemented into FlexCat and hence the default is to create one, probably very long string. ##stringtype <type> Tells FlexCat how strings should look like. Possible types are None No additional characters are created. An image of the string is inserted and nothing else. No output of binary characters (the backslash sequences) is possible. C creates strings according to C. The strings are preceded and followed by the character ". Strings are splitted using the sequences "\ at the end of the line and " at the beginning of the new line. (The backslash is needed in macros.) Binary characters are inserted using \OOO. See C. Oberon is like string type C, except for the trailing backslash at the end of the line. Assembler Strings are created using dc.b. Readable ascii characters are preceded and followed by the character ', binary characters are inserted as $XX. See Assembler. E Strings are preceded and followed by the character '. A + concatenates strings which are spread on different lines. Binary characters are inserted like in C. Let's look at an excerpt from the file C_h.sd creating an include file for the programming language C. ##stringtype C ##shortstrings #ifndef %b_CAT_H /* Assure that this is read only once. */ #define %b_CAT_H /* Get other include files */ #include <exec/types.h> #include <libraries/locale.h> /* Prototypes */ extern void Open%bCatalog(struct Locale *, STRPTR); extern void Close%bCatalog(void); extern STRPTR Get%bString(LONG); /* Definitions of the identifiers and their ID's */ /* This line will be repeated for any string. */ #define %i %d #endif Including FlexCat source in own programs **************************************** Of course this depends on what source is created and hence on the source description. What we are talking here about are the source description files distributed with FlexCat. See Source description. All source descriptions should allow using the program without locale.library. However, a global variable called LocaleBase (_LocaleBase for assembler) must be present and initialized with NULL or by a call to `Exec/OpenLibrary'. No localizing is possible in the former case except when using the source description C_c_V20.sd. This allows localizing on 2.0 by repacing the locale.library with the iffparse.library. (A variable IFFParseBase has to be present for this and initialized like LocaleBase.) See C. The programmer does not need knowledge of these libraries except when creating own source descriptions. There are three functions and calling them is rather simple. - : OpenCatalog (locale, language) This function possibly opens a catalog. The argument locale is a pointer to a Locale structure amd language is a string containing the name of the language that should be opened. In most cases these should both be NULL or NIL, respectively, because the user's defaults are overwritten otherwise. See `Locale.OpenCatalog' for details. If the user has Deutsch and Français as default languages and the programs base name is XXX this looks for the following files: PROGDIR:Catalogs/Deutsch/XXX.catalog LOCALE:Catalogs/Deutsch/XXX.catalog PROGDIR:Catalogs/Français/XXX.catalog LOCALE:Catalogs/Français/XXX.catalog where PROGDIR: is the programs current directory. (The order of PROGDIR: and LOCALE: can get changed in order to suppress a requester like Insert volume YYY. OpenCatalog is of type void (a procedure for Pascal programmers) and hence gives no result. - : GetString (ID) Gives a pointer to the string with the given ID from the catalog description. Of course these strings are owned by locale.library and must not be modified. An example might be useful. Take the string from the catalog description example, which was called msgHello. The source descriptions declare a constant msgHello representing the ID. This could be printed in C using printf("%s\n", GetString(msgHello)); - : CloseCatalog (void) This function frees the catalog (that is the allocated RAM) before terminating the program. You can call this function at any time even before OpenCatalog is called. FlexCat source in C programs ============================ C source consists of two parts: A .c file which should be compiled and linked without further notice and an include file which should be included from any source part using catalog strings and which defines the ID's as macros. Two different versions are available for the .c part: C_c_V21.sd is a rather simple version using the respective functions of the locale.library and allowing localizing beginning with Workbench 2.1. But C_c_V20.sd replaces the locale.library with the iffparse.library if the former isn't available and the latter is. This allows localizing for Workbench 2.0 too. Programs using this should have an option Language and give the corresponding argument to OpenCatalog. This option should not be used in 2.1 and above and hence the language argument of OpenCatalog should still be NULL. Of course it would be possible to write a third version using catalogs with Ansii C, but I don't want to support 1.3 anymore. To separate the FlexCat functions OpenCatalog and CloseCatalog from the corresponding Locale functions with the same names and to allow different catalogs in one program the FlexCat functions get slightly modified names here: OpenXXXCatalog, CloseXXXCatalog and GetXXXString, where XXX is the base name from the source description. The concept is copied from the GadToolsBox and prooved good, as I think. See Source description. The function prototypes are: void OpenXXXCatalog(struct Locale *loc, char *language); STRPTR GetXXXString(ULONG); void CloseXXXCatalog(void); For an example see HelloLocalWorld.c. (see Survey) FlexCat source in Oberon programs ================================= There are two different source descriptions: Oberon_V38.sd creates source using Locale.mod from Hartmut Goebel. Oberon_V39.sd creates source using the Locale.mod distributed with AmigaOberon. The function prototypes are XXX.OpenCatalog(loc: Locale.LocalePtr; language : ARRAY OF CHAR); XXX.GetString(num: LONGINT): Exec.StrPtr; XXX.CloseCatalog(); where XXX is the basename from the source description. See Source description. Finally an example using FlexCat source: MODULE HelloLocalWorld; IMPORT x:=HelloLocalWorld_Cat; Dos; BEGIN x.OpenCatalog(NIL, ""); Dos.PrintF("%s\n", x.GetString(x.msgHello)); (* Catalog will be closed automatically *) (* when program exits. *) END Anything; FlexCat source in Assembler programs ==================================== Assembler source is created for usage with the Aztec Assembler. This should not be very different to other assemblers and you should be able to implement own source descriptions. The source consists of two parts: A .asm file which should be assembled and linked without further notice and an .i include file which defines the string ID's and must be included by the using program. The FlexCat-function names are slightly modified to allow the usage of different catalogs in one file: These are OpenXXXCatalog, CloseXXXCatalog and GetXXXString, where XXX is the base name from the source description. The concept is copied from the GadToolsBox and prooved good, as I think. See Source description. As usual the function result is given in d0 and the functions save registers d2-d7 and a2-a7. OpenCatalog expects its arguments in a0 (pointer to Locale structure) and a1 (Pointer to language string) which should be NULL in most cases. GetString expects an string ID in d0. Finally an example of a program using FLexCat source: * HelloLocalWorld.asm include "XXX.i" ; Opening this is a must. This ; contains "xref OpenHelloLocalWorldCatalog", ... xref _LVOOpenLibrary xref _LVOCloseLibrary xref _AbsExecBase dseg LocNam: dc.b "locale.library",0 dc.l _LocaleBase,4 ; Must be present under this name cseg main: move.l #38,d0 ; Open locale.library lea LocName,a1 move.l _AbsExecBase.a6 jsr _LVOOpenLibrary(a6) * NO exit, if OpenLibrary fails sub.l a0,a0 ; Open catalog sub.l a1,a1 jsr OpenHelloLocalWorldCatalog move.l #msgHello,d0 ; Get pointer to string jsr GetHelloLocalWorldString jsr PrintD0 ; and print it Ende: jsr CloseHelloLocalWorldCatalog ; Close Catalog move.l _LocaleBase,a1 ; Close locale.library move.l a1,d0 ; this test is a must for 1.3 beq Ende1 jsr CloseLibrary Ende1: rts end FlexCat source in E programs ============================ E differs from drastically other programming languages in one certain point: You cannot compile separate modules and link them together. All source must be in one file. The best solution for this problem is to use EPP from Barry Wills. (Sources: Aminet, directory dev/e, Fish disks) This allows you to integrate the sources created with the source description E21b.sd with one line: PMODULE 'xxx_cat' where xxx is the basename of your application. Without EPP you need to insert the FlexCat-source manually into your own source. You must insert the source between after your own definitions and before the first procedure. (Otherwise you would be forced to create and insert more than one file with FlexCat-source.) The created source contains functions get_xxx_string, open_xxx_catalog and close_xxx_catalog. (These slightly modified names are needed to allow different catalogs in one program.) Please note that (unlike in C, for example) you must not call get_xxx_string before open_xxx_catalog! A HelloLocalWorld.e using EPP might look like this: /* HelloLocalWorld.e */ PMODULE hellolocalworld_cat PROC main() /* Open Locale.library; No exit, if failure! */ localebase := OpenLibrary('locale.library', 0) /* Open the catalog file. */ open_hellolocalworld_catalog(NIL, NIL) WriteF('\s\n', get_hellolocalworld_string(MSG_HELLO_WORLD)) close_hellolocalworld_catalog() ENDPROC Further development of FlexCat ****************************** I don't expect much further development for I think FlexCat to be rather complete. Of course I'm open for suggestions, tips or critics. Especially I offer to include new string types because this is possible with very minor changes. I would be pleased, if someone would send me new source descriptions and I could introduce them into further distributions. Any programming language, any extensions, provided that they are prooved good by testing the source in a real existing program. And I would appreciate receiving new catalogs. It is enough to insert the strings in the file NewCatalogs.ct which is part of the distribution. Credits ******* My thanks go to: Albert Weinert for KitCat, the predecessor of FlexCat which has done me valuable things, but finally wasn't flexible enough. Reinhard Spisser und Sebastiano Vigna for the Amiga version of texinfo. This documentation is written using it. The Free Software Foundation for the original version of texinfo and many other excellent software. Matt Dillon for DICE and especially for DME. Alessandro Galassi for the italian catalog. Lionel Vintenat for the E source description and its documentation, the french catalogs and bug reports. The people of #AmigaGer for answering many stupid questions and lots of fun, for example stefanb (Stefan Becker), PowerStat (Kai Hoffmann), \ ill (Markus Illenseer), Quarvon (Jürgen Lang), ZZA (Bernhard Möllemann), Tron (Mathias Scheler), mungo (Ignatios Souvlatzis), \ jow (Jürgen Weinelt) und Stargazer (Petra Zeidler). Commodore for the Amiga and Kickstart 2.0. Keep on developing it and I'll be an Amiga-user for the next 8 years too. ;-) Index ***** .cd Catalog description .ct Catalog translation .sd Source description Adress Disclaimer Ascii-Code Catalog description Assembler Assembler Author Disclaimer AztecAs_asm.sd Assembler AztecAs_i.sd Assembler C C Catalog description Catalog description Catalog translation Catalog translation CLI Program start Contributions Future Control characters Catalog description Copyright Disclaimer Credits Credits C_c_V20.sd C C_c_V21.sd C C_h.sd C Deutsch.ct Catalog translation Distribution Disclaimer E E E21b.sd E E21b_defs.sd E E21b_procs.sd E EPP E FlexCat Future FlexCat source Using FlexCat source FlexCat.cd Catalog description Future Future Installation Installation Internet Disclaimer Mail Disclaimer Oberon Oberon Oberon_V38.sd Oberon Oberon_V39.sd Oberon Permissions Disclaimer Prohibitions Disclaimer Requirements Installation Source description Source description Survey Survey Using FlexCat source Using FlexCat source Workbench Program start