gettext: gettext

1 
1 11.2 About ‘gettext’
1 ====================
1 
1    The definition of the ‘gettext’ interface comes from a Uniforum
1 proposal.  It was submitted there by Sun, who had implemented the
1 ‘gettext’ function in SunOS 4, around 1990.  Nowadays, the ‘gettext’
1 interface is specified by the OpenI18N standard.
1 
1    The main point about this solution is that it does not follow the
1 method of normal file handling (open-use-close) and that it does not
1 burden the programmer with so many tasks, especially the unique key
1 handling.  Of course here also a unique key is needed, but this key is
1 the message itself (how long or short it is).  See ⇒Comparison
1 for a more detailed comparison of the two methods.
1 
1    The following section contains a rather detailed description of the
1 interface.  We make it that detailed because this is the interface we
1 chose for the GNU ‘gettext’ Library.  Programmers interested in using
1 this library will be interested in this description.
1 

Menu

1 
· Interface to gettext        The interface
· Ambiguities                 Solving ambiguities
· Locating Catalogs           Locating message catalog files
· Charset conversion          How to request conversion to Unicode
· Contexts                    Solving ambiguities in GUI programs
· Plural forms                Additional functions for handling plurals
· Optimized gettext           Optimization of the *gettext functions
1