Re: CVS & Gettext

[Bruno Haible]

Akim Demaille writes:

> Paul> I suggest using AM_GNU_GETTEXT([external]) ...
> 
> Err, but is this really what is recommended?  It means, if my reading
> is correct, that you will simply not use internationalization on
> systems that don't have GNU Gettext.

Yes, this is what it means. The reasoning is that nowadays, the glibc
based systems are more important than other Unix systems. By
recommending AM_GNU_GETTEXT([external]) we hope that more packages
will become i18ned, since they don't have to carry around 500 KB of C
code with them. The poor OSF/1 and Solaris users who want i18ned
software should install gettext first, and they will be rewarded by a
shared library libintl.so (instead of a static one earlier, which
increased the size of every executable).

Still, there are some bugs in the autoconf macros in 0.11.1. I'd
recommend AM_GNU_GETTEXT([external]) only starting from gettext 0.11.2.

> One note, BTW, the Gettext documentation does not make its version
> explicit in the top node.  This is customary for Texinfo
> documentation, and very helpfully to quickly find whether the info
> page you read is the proper one.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Bruno