gettext
The GNU C Library does not contain the source code for the programs to
handle message catalogs for the gettext
functions. As part of
the GNU project the GNU gettext package contains everything the
developer needs. The functionality provided by the tools in this
package by far exceeds the abilities of the gencat
program
described above for the catgets
functions.
There is a program msgfmt
which is the equivalent program to the
gencat
program. It generates from the human-readable and
-editable form of the message catalog a binary file which can be used by
the gettext
functions. But there are several more programs
available.
The xgettext
program can be used to automatically extract the
translatable messages from a source file. I.e., the programmer need not
take care for the translations and the list of messages which have to be
translated. S/He will simply wrap the translatable string in calls to
gettext
et.al and the rest will be done by xgettext
. This
program has a lot of option which help to customize the output or do
help to understand the input better.
Other programs help to manage development cycle when new messages appear in the source files or when a new translation of the messages appear. here it should only be noted that using all the tools in GNU gettext it is possible to completely automize the handling of message catalog. Beside marking the translatable string in the source code and generating the translations the developers do not have anything to do themselves.
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