(gettext.info.gz) Ambiguities

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 11.2.2 Solving Ambiguities
 --------------------------
 
 While this single name domain works well for most applications there
 might be the need to get translations from more than one domain.  Of
 course one could switch between different domains with calls to
 `textdomain', but this is really not convenient nor is it fast.  A
 possible situation could be one case subject to discussion during this
 writing:  all error messages of functions in the set of common used
 functions should go into a separate domain `error'.  By this mean we
 would only need to translate them once.  Another case are messages from
 a library, as these _have_ to be independent of the current domain set
 by the application.
 
 For this reasons there are two more functions to retrieve strings:
 
      char *dgettext (const char *domain_name, const char *msgid);
      char *dcgettext (const char *domain_name, const char *msgid,
                       int category);
 
    Both take an additional argument at the first place, which
 corresponds to the argument of `textdomain'.  The third argument of
 `dcgettext' allows to use another locale but `LC_MESSAGES'.  But I
 really don't know where this can be useful.  If the DOMAIN_NAME is
 `NULL' or CATEGORY has an value beside the known ones, the result is
 undefined.  It should also be noted that this function is not part of
 the second known implementation of this function family, the one found
 in Solaris.
 
    A second ambiguity can arise by the fact, that perhaps more than one
 domain has the same name.  This can be solved by specifying where the
 needed message catalog files can be found.
 
      char *bindtextdomain (const char *domain_name,
                            const char *dir_name);
 
    Calling this function binds the given domain to a file in the
 specified directory (how this file is determined follows below).
 Especially a file in the systems default place is not favored against
 the specified file anymore (as it would be by solely using
 `textdomain').  A `NULL' pointer for the DIR_NAME parameter returns the
 binding associated with DOMAIN_NAME.  If DOMAIN_NAME itself is `NULL'
 nothing happens and a `NULL' pointer is returned.  Here again as for
 all the other functions is true that none of the return value must be
 changed!
 
    It is important to remember that relative path names for the
 DIR_NAME parameter can be trouble.  Since the path is always computed
 relative to the current directory different results will be achieved
 when the program executes a `chdir' command.  Relative paths should
 always be avoided to avoid dependencies and unreliabilities.
 

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