Check-in [016afc2026]

-> Servus!
</pre>

This should still work with the new extension for compatibility reasons.

# Proposal

There are 4 possible proposed ways of extending msgcat to support
this. _We intend to implement the first option._

## Option 1: Extend all msgcat commands to support all 4 use-cases.

So any **msgcat** command will detect the scenario on its own and extract the package namespace automatically.

The commands which are packet-namespace related are: **mc**, **mcexists**, **mcpackagelocale**, **mcforgetpackage**, **mcpackagenamespaceget** (new command, see below), **mcpackageconfig**, **mcset** and **mcmset**.

This has the following advantages (compared to the alternatives):

    ...
    set message [uplevel 1 {::msgcat::mc $message}]
}
</pre>

This will work in all use-cases, e.g. if `tooltip::tooltip` is called by a method following use-case 1 to 4.

## Option 2: new command to get package namespace

The "magic" to extract the package namespace is exposed by the command:

<pre>
mcpackagenamespaceget
</pre>

proc ::tooltip::show {widget messagenamespace message} {
    ...
    set message [namespace eval $messagenamespace [list ::msgcat::mc $message]]
    ...
}
</pre>

Examples with the 4 use-cases:

1. First use case: the package does not use OO

	<pre>
	namespace eval ::N1 {
	    proc m1 {} {msgcat::mcpackagenamespaceget}
	}

	% N1::m1
	-> ::N1
	</pre>

2. Second use case: call within class definition script

	<pre>
	% namespace eval ::N2Class {
	    oo::class create C1 {puts "pns=[msgcat::mcpackagenamespaceget]"}
	}
	-> pns=::N2Class
	-> ::N2Class::C1
	</pre>

3. Third use case: The package implementation is done by a class

	<pre>
	namespace eval ::N3Class {
	    oo::class create C1
	    oo::define C1 method m1 {msgcat::mcpackagenamespaceget}
	}

	# The class object may be used in another namespace

	namespace eval ::N3Obj {
	    set O1 [::N3Class::C1 new]
	}

	% $N3Obj::O1 m1
	-> ::N3Class
	</pre>

4. Fourth use case: The package implementation is done by a classless object

	<pre>
	namespace eval ::N4 {
	    oo::object create O1
	    oo::objdefine O1 method m1 {} {msgcat::mcpackagenamespaceget}
	}

	% N4::O1 m1
	-> ::N4
	</pre>

### Manually overwriting the package namespace by namespace eval

As stated in the introduction, current OO code might have used an explicit `namespace eval packagenamespace` to make msgcat work. This should still be supported:

<pre>
namespace eval ::N4 {
    oo::object create O1
    oo::objdefine O1 method m1 {} {
        namespace eval ::N5 { msgcat::mcpackagenamespaceget}
    }
}

% N4::O1 m1
-> ::N5
</pre>

Note that in most real cases, one will explicitly specify "`::N4`" instead "`::N5`", as this is the package namespace.
"`::N5`" was chosen in the example to show the fact, that the `namespace eval` overrides any class-magic.

## Option 3: new command to get a translation with a package namespace as argument

A new command is proposed to get a translation with an explicit namespace:

<pre>
mcn ns src args...
</pre>

with the arguments:

* ns: package namespace to do the translation for
* src: the translation source string (like mc command)
* args: eventual arguments to contained format patterns (like mc command)

This command is identical to the `mc` command, with the difference, that the package namespace is not found by an implicit call to `mcpackagenamespaceget`, but may be explicitly specified as first argument

Then, the `mc` command may be expressed like:

proc ::tooltip::show {widget messagenamespace message} {
    ...
    set message [::msgcat::mcn $messagenamespace $message]
}
</pre>


## Option 4: Command "mcexists" should get a parameter -namespace to explicitly specify the namespace

The command `mcexists` has currently the syntax:

<pre>
mcexists ?-exactnamespace? ?-exactlocale? src
</pre>