132 lines
5.1 KiB
Plaintext
132 lines
5.1 KiB
Plaintext
This is the GNU gettext package. It is interesting for authors or
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maintainers of other packages or programs which they want to see
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internationalized. As one step the handling of messages in different
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languages should be implemented. For this task GNU gettext provides
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the needed tools and library functions.
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Users of GNU packages should also install GNU gettext because some
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other GNU packages will use the gettext program included in this
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package to internationalize the messages given by shell scripts.
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Another good reason to install GNU gettext is to make sure the
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here included functions compile ok. This helps to prevent errors
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when installing other packages which use this library. The message
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handling functions are not yet part of POSIX and ISO/IEC standards
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and therefore it is not possible to rely on facts about their
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implementation in the local C library. For this reason, GNU gettext
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tries using the system's functionality only if it is a GNU gettext
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implementation (possibly a different version); otherwise, compatibility
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problems would occur.
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We felt that the Uniforum proposals has the much more flexible interface
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and, what is more important, does not burden the programmers as much as
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the other possibility does.
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Please share your results with us. If this package compiles ok for
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you future GNU release will likely also not fail, at least for reasons
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found in message handling. Send comments and bug reports to
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bug-gnu-gettext@gnu.org
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The goal of this library was to give a unique interface to message
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handling functions. At least the same level of importance was to give
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the programmer/maintainer the needed tools to maintain the message
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catalogs. The interface is designed after the proposals of the
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Uniforum group.
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The homepage of this package is at
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http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/
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The primary FTP site for its distribution is
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ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/gettext/
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The configure script provides two non-standard options. These will
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also be available in other packages if they use the functionality of
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GNU gettext. Use
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--disable-nls
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if you absolutely don't want to have messages handling code. You will
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always get the original messages (mostly English). You could consider
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using NLS support even when you do not need other tongues. If you do
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not install any messages catalogs or do not specify to use another but
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the C locale you will not get translations.
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The set of languages for which catalogs should be installed can also be
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specified while configuring. Of course they must be available but the
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intersection of these two sets are computed automatically. You could
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once and for all define in your profile/cshrc the variable LINGUAS:
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(Bourne Shell) LINGUAS="de fr nl"; export LINGUAS
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(C Shell) setenv LINGUAS "de fr nl"
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or specify it directly while configuring
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env LINGUAS="de fr nl" ./configure
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Consult the manual for more information on language names.
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The second configure option is
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--with-included-gettext
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This forces to use the GNU implementation of the message handling library
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regardless what the local C library provides. This possibility is
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useful if the local C library is a glibc 2.1.x or older, which didn't
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have all the features the included libintl has.
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Other files you might look into:
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`ABOUT-NLS' - current state of the GNU internationalization effort
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`COPYING' - copying conditions
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`INSTALL' - general compilation and installation rules
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`NEWS' - major changes in the current version
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`THANKS' - list of contributors
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Some points you might be interested in before installing the package:
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1. If your system's C library already provides the gettext interface
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and its associated tools don't come from this package, it might be
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a good idea to configure the package with
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--program-transform-name='s/^gettext$/g&/;s/^msgfmt$/g&/;s/^xgettext$/g&/'
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Systems affected by this are:
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Solaris 2.x
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2. Some system have a very dumb^H^H^H^Hstrange version of msgfmt, the
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one which comes with xview. This one is *not* usable. It's best
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you delete^H^H^H^H^H^Hrename it or install this package as in the
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point above with
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--program-transform-name='s/^gettext$/g&/;s/^msgfmt$/g&/;s/^xgettext$/g&/'
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3. The locale name alias scheme implemented here is in a similar form
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implemented in the X Window System. Especially the alias data base
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file can be shared. Normally this file is found at something like
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/usr/lib/X11/locale/locale.alias
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If you have the X Window System installed try to find this file and
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specify the path at the make run:
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make aliaspath='/usr/lib/X11/locale:/usr/local/lib/locale'
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(or whatever is appropriate for you). The file name is always
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locale.alias.
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In the misc/ subdirectory you find an example for an alias database file.
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4. The msgmerge program performs fuzzy search in the message sets. It
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might run a long time on slow systems. I saw this problem when running
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it on my old i386DX25. The time can really be several minutes,
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especially if you have long messages and/or a great number of
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them.
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If you have a faster implementation of the fstrcmp() function and
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want to share it with the rest of us, please contact me.
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