[gettext] Re: Gettext: missing docs and msgfmt problem

[Bruno Haible]

Julian Gilbey wrote on 1999-06-01:

> msgfmt, by default, does not
> append a .mo suffix to its output filenames, unless --strict is used.

You have to provide a .mo suffix yourself. Similarly, when you compile some
code to produce a .o file, it must have the .o suffix; when you give it a .c
suffix
           gcc -c foo.c -o object.c
you cannot link with object.c. So, you see, if you provide wrong or missing
suffixes, you cannot expect things to work.

> there is no documentation for the gettext
> program itself in the info doc.  Nor is there for msgunfmt or possibly
> other standalone programs in the src/ directory.

Are you volunteering to write the doc?

> it provides one
> tool for end users: gettext, which can be used in shell scripts
> written upstream.  It would be really fantastic if there were an easy
> way of generating just gettext together with only the parts of the
> catalogs it actually needs, so that users who want to use
> internationalised shell scripts can do so without having to install
> the whole gettext package.

Very well noted. We will transfer the 'gettext' program from the
gettext package to the sh-utils package.

Bruno