Info Catalog gettext: catgets gettext: Programmers gettext: Comparison

gettext: gettext

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

Menu

 
· 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
 

Info Catalog gettext: catgets gettext: Programmers gettext: Comparison