MAKETEXT -- creates text using Foswiki's I18N infrastructure

Strings captured in the MAKETEXT macro are automatically mapped to the current user's selected language via locale/*.po translation files.

Parameters

Parameter	Description	Default
"text" string="text"	The text to be displayed (the translatable string).
args	a comma-separated list of arguments to be interpolated in the string, replacing [_N] placeholders in it.

Examples

• %MAKETEXT{string="Edit"}% expands to Edit
• %MAKETEXT{"If you have any questions, please contact [_1]." args="%WIKIWEBMASTER%"}% expands to If you have any questions, please contact webmaster@eugeneweb.com.
• %MAKETEXT{"Did you want to [[[_1]][reset [_2]'s password]]?" args="%SYSTEMWEB%.ResetPassword,%WIKIUSERNAME%"}% expands to Did you want to reset Main.WikiGuest's password?

Notes

• [_n] brackets are validated to a positive integer from 1 to 100.
• Missing arguments are replaced with an empty string ''.
• An ampersand (&) followed by one ascii alphabetic character (a...z, A...Z) in the translatable string will be expanded to an access key string. For example, &X will expand to <span class='foswikiAccessKey'>X</span>. If you want to write an actual ampersand, either follow it with a non-alphabetic character or write two consecutive ampersands (&&).
• Translatable strings starting with underscores (_) are reserved. You cannot use translatable phrases starting with an underscore.
• Make sure that the translatable string is constant. Do not include %MACROS% inside the translatable strings as they will be expanded before the %MAKETEXT{...}% itself is handled. You can, however, use macros in the args, as shown in the examples above.
• The string will be output in English if no mapping can be found in the .po translation file for the current user's selected language.

Plurals

The %MAKETEXT macro also supports a limited subset of the quant style bracket notation:

• %MAKETEXT{string="Edit [*,_1,file]" args="4"}% expands to Edit 4 files

Notes on plurals

• Only 3 arguments are supported.
• The first parameter must be an asterisk. Literals quant, numf or # are not supported.
• The 2nd parameter must be the argument number
• The 3rd parameter is the word or phrase to be made plural.