Release Digest: GNU, January 5, 2004

gettext 0.13.1

gettext 0.13.1 is available from http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/
and GNU mirrors, both the distribution .tar.gz and the GPG
signature.

Gettext is the standard GNU package for internationalization and
is used by very many other GNU packages.

Please send comments and bug reports to bug-gnu-gettext@gnu.org.

Karl (not the gettext maintainer, just another user 🙂

Here’s the NEWS:

Version 0.13.1 – December 2003

• Bug fixes in the testsuite and in the examples.

Version 0.13 – November 2003

• Programming languages support:
  • Shell:

    xgettext now also supports shell scripts. It recognizes
    invocations of the programs ‘gettext’, ‘ngettext’, the functions
    ‘eval_gettext’, ‘eval_ngettext’, as well as the deprecated GNU bash
    builtin syntax $”…”.
    New function library:
    gettext.sh – shell functions for internationalized shell
    scripts.
    New program:
    envsubst – substitutes environment variables in shell format
    strings.

  • Perl:

    xgettext now also supports Perl.

  • PHP:

    “xgettext –language=PHP” now supports the plural handling
    functions ngettext, dngettext, dcngettext (introduced in PHP
    4.2.0).

  • ObjectiveC:

    “xgettext –language=ObjectiveC” now supports the @”…” string
    syntax, the NSLocalizedString function and the ObjectiveC specific
    format strings.

    All the tools that manipulate PO files can work with .strings
    files as well, if given the –stringtable-input and/or
    –stringtable-output option. To create a .strings file from a PO or
    POT file, use “msgcat –stringtable-output”. To create a PO or POT
    file from a .strings file, use “xgettext”.

  • GCC-source:

    xgettext’s –language option now supports the value
    “GCC-source”. This is like –language=C, except that in this mode,
    xgettext recognizes the special kind of format strings used in the
    GCC sources and marks them as ‘gcc-internal-format’.

  • C++ with Qt:

    xgettext has a new option –qt that triggers the recognition and
    marking of Qt format strings.

    msgfmt has a new option –qt that generates binary message
    catalogs in Qt’s .qm format.

• Data formats support:
  • Glade:

    xgettext now also supports Glade version 2.

    • xgettext has a more reliable detection of format strings. It
      now recognizes format strings depending on their position, for
      example as the second argument of fprintf(), regardless whether the
      literal string contains format directives. This behaviour can be
      customized through the –flag option.
  • libgettextpo library:
    • New functions for testing the obsolete/fuzzy/*-format flags of
      a message.
    • New convenience functions for extracting and analyzing the
      header entry.
  • Portability:
    • C format strings with positions, as they arise when a
      translator needs to reorder a sentence, are now supported on all
      platforms. On those few platforms (NetBSD and Woe32) for which the
      native printf()/fprintf()/… functions don’t support such format
      strings, replacements are provided through <libintl.h>.
    • A new configuration option –disable-libasprintf allows to
      build all of gettext except libasprintf; this is necessary on
      platforms for which libtool cannot create shared libraries with C++
      code.
  • Documentation:
    • Complete examples illustrating the use of gettext, including
      program sources, Makefile and autoconf infrastructure, have been
      added. They cover the following programming languages:
      C (text mode, GNOME)
      C++ (text mode, Qt, KDE, GNOME)
      ObjectiveC (text mode, GNUstep, GNOME)
      Shell (text mode)
      Python (text mode)
      Lisp (text mode)
      librep (text mode)
      Smalltalk (text mode)
      Java (text mode, AWT, Swing)
      awk (text mode)
      Pascal (text mode)
      YCP (libyui)
      Tcl (text mode, Tk)
      Perl (text mode)
      PHP (text mode)