NAME
    i18n - Perl Internationalization Pragma

VERSION
    This document describes version 0.10 of i18n, released October 14, 2007.

SYNOPSIS
    In one-liners:

        % export LANG=sp
        % perl -Mi18n=/path/to/po-files/ -le 'print ~~"Hello, world"';
        Hola, mundo

    In your module:

        use i18n "/path/to/po-files";
        my $place = ~~'world';
        print ~~"Hello, $world";

DESCRIPTION
    Internationalization (abbreviated "i18n") is the process of designing an
    application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions.
    The most basic task is to let your program know which strings are meant
    for human consumption and which strings are intended for the computer.

    Strings for humans need to get localized (translated to the language of
    the human using your program) and strings for computers must not get
    translated.

  Syntax
    The "i18n" module gives you a remarkably simple way to mark strings that
    are intended for humans. All you do is put two tilde signs ("~~") in
    front of every string that is intended to be translated. That's it. All
    the other details of localization are handled outside the program. Here
    are some examples:

        my $str1 = ~~'The time is now';
        my $str2 = ~~"$str1 for having a cow";
        my $str3 = ~~qq{Wow! $str2};
        my $str4 = ~~<<END;
        How now.
        Brown cow.
        END

    Think of the tilde signs as an indicator that you are looking for things
    that approximates the string in the user's language. To turn off the
    magic of "~~" lexically, just say:

        no i18n;

    One nice thing about this particular markup, is that you can completely
    turn off internationalization, by simply removing the "use i18n;"
    statement. The "~~" signs are actually valid Perl that just happen to
    not do anything in this context, and thus are constant-optimized away at
    compile time.

  Implementation
    When you say:

        my $string = ~~"Bob is your uncle";

    then $string really is an "i18n::string" object that is overloaded to
    stringify as a localized translation.

    Currently, the magic is just a thin wrapper on
    "Locale::Maketext::Simple", which makes it equivalent to this call:

        my $string = loc("Bob is your uncle");

    Similarly, this line:

        my $string = ~~"$person is your uncle";

    will be turned into this at runtime:

        my $string = loc("[_1] is your uncle", $person);

CAVEATS
    The authors of this module are not linguists. If you would like to help
    us define suitable "i18n" magic for your language, please send us an
    email.

SEE ALSO
    Locale::Maketext::Simple, Locale::Maketext::Lexicon

AUTHORS
    Audrey Tang <cpan@audreyt.org>, Ingy döt Net <INGY@cpan.org>.

COPYRIGHT
    Copyright 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 by Audrey Tang <cpan@audreyt.org>, Ingy
    döt Net <INGY@cpan.org>.

    This software is released under the MIT license cited below.

  The "MIT" License
    Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
    copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
    "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
    without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
    distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
    permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
    the following conditions:

    The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
    in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

    THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
    OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
    MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
    IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY
    CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT,
    TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE
    SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.