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[Eric Sandall <eric AT sandall.us>]

Quoting "Jeremy A. Kolb" <jkolb AT brandeis.edu>:
> What exactly does gettext do? I've seen it on every linux box that I've
> ever had.

$ gaze what gettext
gettext:
gettext is the GNU internationalisation library.
The Purpose of GNU gettext
Usually, programs are written and documented in English, and use English
at execution time to interact with users. This is true not only of GNU
software, but also of a great deal of commercial and free software.
Using a common language is quite handy for communication between
developers, maintainers and users from all countries. On the other hand,
most people are less comfortable with English than with their own native
language, and would prefer to use their mother tongue for day to day's
work, as far as possible. Many would simply love to see their computer
screen showing a lot less of English, and far more of their own
language.
However, to many people, this dream might appear so far fetched that
they may believe it is not even worth spending time thinking about it.
They have no confidence at all that the dream might ever become true.
Yet some have not lost hope, and have organized themselves. The
Translation Project is a formalization of this hope into a workable
structure, which has a good chance to get all of us nearer the
achievement of a truly multi-lingual set of programs.
GNU gettext is an important step for the Translation Project, as it is
an asset on which we may build many other steps. This package offers to
programmers, translators and even users, a well integrated set of tools
and documentation. Specifically, the GNU gettext utilities are a set of
tools that provides a framework within which other free packages may
produce multi-lingual messages. These tools include a set of conventions
about how programs should be written to support message catalogs, a
directory and file naming organization for the message catalogs
themselves, a runtime library supporting the retrieval of translated
messages, and a few stand-alone programs to massage in various ways the
sets of translatable strings, or already translated strings. A special
mode for GNU Emacs also helps ease interested parties into preparing
these sets, or bringing them up to date.
GNU gettext is designed to minimize the impact of internationalization
on program sources, keeping this impact as small and hardly noticeable
as possible. Internationalization has better chances of succeeding if it
is very light weighted, or at least, appear to be so, when looking at
program sources.
The Translation Project also uses the GNU gettext distribution as a
vehicle for documenting its structure and methods. This goes beyond the
strict technicalities of documenting the GNU gettext proper. By so
doing, translators will find in a single place, as far as possible, all
they need to know for properly doing their translating work. Also, this
supplemental documentation might also help programmers, and even curious
users, in understanding how GNU gettext is related to the remainder of
the Translation Project, and consequently, have a glimpse at the big
picture.

:)

-sandalle

--
Eric Sandall                     |  Source Mage GNU/Linux Developer
eric AT sandall.us PGP: 0xA8EFDD61  |  http://www.sourcemage.org/
http://eric.sandall.us/          |  SysAdmin @ Inst. Shock Physics @ WSU
http://counter.li.org/  #196285  |  http://www.shock.wsu.edu/

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