1 This is the GNU gettext package. It is interesting for authors or 2 maintainers of other packages or programs which they want to see 3 internationalized. As one step the handling of messages in different 4 languages should be implemented. For this task GNU gettext provides 5 the needed tools and library functions. 6 7 Users of GNU packages should also install GNU gettext because some 8 other GNU packages will use the gettext program included in this 9 package to internationalize the messages given by shell scripts. 10 11 Another good reason to install GNU gettext is to make sure the 12 here included functions compile ok. This helps to prevent errors 13 when installing other packages which use this library. The message 14 handling functions are not yet part of POSIX and ISO/IEC standards 15 and therefore it is not possible to rely on facts about their 16 implementation in the local C library. For this reason, GNU gettext 17 tries using the system's functionality only if it is a GNU gettext 18 implementation (possibly a different version); otherwise, compatibility 19 problems would occur. 20 21 We felt that the Uniforum proposals has the much more flexible interface 22 and, what is more important, does not burden the programmers as much as 23 the other possibility does. 24 25 26 Please share your results with us. If this package compiles ok for 27 you future GNU release will likely also not fail, at least for reasons 28 found in message handling. Send comments and bug reports to 29 bug-gnu-gettext (a] gnu.org 30 31 32 The goal of this library was to give a unique interface to message 33 handling functions. At least the same level of importance was to give 34 the programmer/maintainer the needed tools to maintain the message 35 catalogs. The interface is designed after the proposals of the 36 Uniforum group. 37 38 39 The homepage of this package is at 40 41 http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/ 42 43 The primary FTP site for its distribution is 44 45 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/gettext/ 46 47 48 The configure script provides two non-standard options. These will 49 also be available in other packages if they use the functionality of 50 GNU gettext. Use 51 52 --disable-nls 53 54 if you absolutely don't want to have messages handling code. You will 55 always get the original messages (mostly English). You could consider 56 using NLS support even when you do not need other tongues. If you do 57 not install any messages catalogs or do not specify to use another but 58 the C locale you will not get translations. 59 60 The set of languages for which catalogs should be installed can also be 61 specified while configuring. Of course they must be available but the 62 intersection of these two sets are computed automatically. You could 63 once and for all define in your profile/cshrc the variable LINGUAS: 64 65 (Bourne Shell) LINGUAS="de fr nl"; export LINGUAS 66 67 (C Shell) setenv LINGUAS "de fr nl" 68 69 or specify it directly while configuring 70 71 env LINGUAS="de fr nl" ./configure 72 73 Consult the manual for more information on language names. 74 75 The second configure option is 76 77 --with-included-gettext 78 79 This forces to use the GNU implementation of the message handling library 80 regardless what the local C library provides. This possibility is 81 useful if the local C library is a glibc 2.1.x or older, which didn't 82 have all the features the included libintl has. 83 84 85 Other files you might look into: 86 87 `ABOUT-NLS' - current state of the GNU internationalization effort 88 `COPYING' - copying conditions 89 `INSTALL' - general compilation and installation rules 90 `NEWS' - major changes in the current version 91 `THANKS' - list of contributors 92 93 94 Some points you might be interested in before installing the package: 95 96 1. If your system's C library already provides the gettext interface 97 and its associated tools don't come from this package, it might be 98 a good idea to configure the package with 99 --program-transform-name='s/^gettext$/g&/;s/^msgfmt$/g&/;s/^xgettext$/g&/' 100 101 Systems affected by this are: 102 Solaris 2.x 103 104 2. Some system have a very dumb^H^H^H^Hstrange version of msgfmt, the 105 one which comes with xview. This one is *not* usable. It's best 106 you delete^H^H^H^H^H^Hrename it or install this package as in the 107 point above with 108 --program-transform-name='s/^gettext$/g&/;s/^msgfmt$/g&/;s/^xgettext$/g&/' 109 110 3. The locale name alias scheme implemented here is in a similar form 111 implemented in the X Window System. Especially the alias data base 112 file can be shared. Normally this file is found at something like 113 114 /usr/lib/X11/locale/locale.alias 115 116 If you have the X Window System installed try to find this file and 117 specify the path at the make run: 118 119 make aliaspath='/usr/lib/X11/locale:/usr/local/lib/locale' 120 121 (or whatever is appropriate for you). The file name is always 122 locale.alias. 123 In the misc/ subdirectory you find an example for an alias database file. 124 125 4. The msgmerge program performs fuzzy search in the message sets. It 126 might run a long time on slow systems. I saw this problem when running 127 it on my old i386DX25. The time can really be several minutes, 128 especially if you have long messages and/or a great number of 129 them. 130 If you have a faster implementation of the fstrcmp() function and 131 want to share it with the rest of us, please contact me. 132
Indexes created Fri Sep 25 00:27:33 UTC 2026