Internationalization

mkmsgs and gettxt (OS-specific)

You use the mkmsgs command to store the strings for a given locale in a file that can be read by the message retrieval function gettxt. mkmsgs accepts an input file consisting of text strings separated by newlines. If the file fr.str contains

   Votre choix (o/n)
   oui
   non

the command

   $ mkmsgs -o -i fr fr.str progmsgs

will generate a file called progmsgs that, when installed in the directory /usr/lib/locale/fr/LC_MESSAGES, can be read by gettxt such that

   puts(gettxt("progmsgs:1", "Choose (y/n)"));

will display

   Votre choix (o/n)

in a French locale. gettxt takes as its first argument the name of the file created by mkmsgs and the number of the string in the file, counting from 1. You hard-code the second argument, not necessarily in English, in case gettxt fails to retrieve the message string from the current locale, or the ``"C"'' locale.