This is the GNU gettext package.  It is interesting for authors or
maintainers of other packages or programs which they want to see
internationalized.  As one step the handling of messages in different
languages should be implemented.  For this task GNU gettext provides
the needed tools and library functions.

Because this library will soon be part of many/all other GNU packages
it is also interesting for other people to install this package to
make sure it compiles ok.  The message handling functions are not yet
part of POSIX and ISO/IEC standards and therefore it is not possible
to rely on facts about their implementation in the local C library.

We felt that the Uniforum proposals has the much more flexible interface
and, what is more important, does not burden the programmers as much as
the other possibility does.


Please share your results with us.  If this package compiles ok for
you future GNU release will likely also not fail, at least for reasons
found in message handling.  Send comments and bug reports to
		bug-gnu-utils@prep.ai.mit.edu

The goal of this library was to give a unique interface to message
handling functions.  At least the same level of importance was to give
the author/maintainer the needed tools to maintain the message handling
catalogs.  The interface is designed after the proposals of the Uniforum
group.  So systems having this interface implemented in their C library
don't need the library provided here (and it will automatically not be
included).  If your systems C library implements the second widely
available approach (X/Opens catgets) the library will use the and only
some stubs will be compiled to provide the needed interface.  If neither
is locally available a full implementation of the library will be
compiled.

The configure script provides two non-standard options.  These will
also be available in other packages if they use the functionality of
GNU gettext.  Use

	--disable-nls

if you absolutely don't want to have messages handling code.  You will
always get the original messages (mostly english).  You could consider
using NLS support even when you do not need other tongues.  If you do
not install any messages catalogs or do not specify to use another but
the C locale you will not get translations.

The set of languages for which catalogs should be installed can also be
specified while configuring.  Of course they must be available but the
intersection of these two sets are computed automatically.  You could
one and for all define in your profile/cshrc the variable LINGUAS:

	setenv LINGUAS "de fr nl"
	LINGUAS="de fr nl"; export LINGUAS

or specify it directly while configuring

	env LINGUAS="de fr nl" configure

The languages/country short forms are to be taken from ISO-639.  Consult
the manual for more information on this.

The second configure option is

	--with-gnu-gettext

This forces to use the library implementing the message handling regardless
what the local C library provides.  This possibility is much less error
prone because possible unrelyable effects of the local message handling
system are avoided.


Other files you might look into:

`COPYING' -	copying conditions
`INSTALL' -	general compilation and installation rules
`NEWS' -	major changes in the current version
`NLS' -		current state of the GNU internationalization effort
`THANKS' -	list of contributors


Some points you might be interested in before installing the package:

1.  The package contains a file magic.add.  This is intended to be
    added to your /etc/magic file.  After adding this the `file' command
    will recognize GNU message catalog files (.mo files).

2.  If your system's C library already provides the gettext interface
    it might be a good idea to configure the package with
        --program-prefix=g

    Systems affected by this are:
        Solaris 2.x, future GNU and GNU/Linux systems

3.  Some system have a very dumb^H^H^H^Hstrange version of msgfmt, the
    one which comes with xview.  This one is *not* usable.  It's best
    you delete^H^H^H^H^H^Hrename it or install this package as in the
    point above with
	--program-prefix=g

4.  On some system it is better to have strings aligned (I've been told
    Sparcs like strings aligned to 8 byte boundaries).  If you want to
    have the output of msgfmt aligned you can use the -a option.  But you
    also could change the default value to be different from 1.  Take
    a look at the config.h file, built by configure.
