| .\" Copyright (c) Bruno Haible <haible@clisp.cons.org> |
| .\" |
| .\" This is free documentation; you can redistribute it and/or |
| .\" modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as |
| .\" published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of |
| .\" the License, or (at your option) any later version. |
| .\" |
| .\" References consulted: |
| .\" GNU glibc-2 source code and manual |
| .\" GNU gettext source code and manual |
| .\" LI18NUX 2000 Globalization Specification |
| .\" |
| .TH GETTEXT 3 "May 2001" "GNU gettext 0.18.1" |
| .SH NAME |
| gettext, dgettext, dcgettext \- translate message |
| .SH SYNOPSIS |
| .nf |
| .B #include <libintl.h> |
| .sp |
| .BI "char * gettext (const char * " msgid ); |
| .BI "char * dgettext (const char * " domainname ", const char * " msgid ); |
| .BI "char * dcgettext (const char * " domainname ", const char * " msgid , |
| .BI " int " category ); |
| .fi |
| .SH DESCRIPTION |
| The \fBgettext\fP, \fBdgettext\fP and \fBdcgettext\fP functions attempt to |
| translate a text string into the user's native language, by looking up the |
| translation in a message catalog. |
| .PP |
| The \fImsgid\fP argument identifies the message to be translated. By |
| convention, it is the English version of the message, with non-ASCII |
| characters replaced by ASCII approximations. This choice allows the |
| translators to work with message catalogs, called PO files, that contain |
| both the English and the translated versions of each message, and can be |
| installed using the \fBmsgfmt\fP utility. |
| .PP |
| A message domain is a set of translatable \fImsgid\fP messages. Usually, |
| every software package has its own message domain. The domain name is used |
| to determine the message catalog where the translation is looked up; it must |
| be a non-empty string. For the \fBgettext\fP function, it is specified through |
| a preceding \fBtextdomain\fP call. For the \fBdgettext\fP and \fBdcgettext\fP |
| functions, it is passed as the \fIdomainname\fP argument; if this argument is |
| NULL, the domain name specified through a preceding \fBtextdomain\fP call is |
| used instead. |
| .PP |
| Translation lookup operates in the context of the current locale. For the |
| \fBgettext\fP and \fBdgettext\fP functions, the \fBLC_MESSAGES\fP locale |
| facet is used. It is determined by a preceding call to the \fBsetlocale\fP |
| function. \fBsetlocale(LC_ALL,"")\fP initializes the \fBLC_MESSAGES\fP locale |
| based on the first nonempty value of the three environment variables |
| \fBLC_ALL\fP, \fBLC_MESSAGES\fP, \fBLANG\fP; see \fBsetlocale\fP(3). For the |
| \fBdcgettext\fP function, the locale facet is determined by the \fIcategory\fP |
| argument, which should be one of the \fBLC_xxx\fP constants defined in the |
| <locale.h> header, excluding \fBLC_ALL\fP. In both cases, the functions also |
| use the \fBLC_CTYPE\fP locale facet in order to convert the translated message |
| from the translator's codeset to the current locale's codeset, unless |
| overridden by a prior call to the \fBbind_textdomain_codeset\fP function. |
| .PP |
| The message catalog used by the functions is at the pathname |
| \fIdirname\fP/\fIlocale\fP/\fIcategory\fP/\fIdomainname\fP.mo. Here |
| \fIdirname\fP is the directory specified through \fBbindtextdomain\fP. Its |
| default is system and configuration dependent; typically it is |
| \fIprefix\fP/share/locale, where \fIprefix\fP is the installation prefix of the |
| package. \fIlocale\fP is the name of the current locale facet; the GNU |
| implementation also tries generalizations, such as the language name without |
| the territory name. \fIcategory\fP is \fBLC_MESSAGES\fP for the \fBgettext\fP |
| and \fBdgettext\fP functions, or the argument passed to the \fBdcgettext\fP |
| function. |
| .PP |
| If the \fBLANGUAGE\fP environment variable is set to a nonempty value, and the |
| locale is not the "C" locale, the value of \fBLANGUAGE\fP is assumed to contain |
| a colon separated list of locale names. The functions will attempt to look up |
| a translation of \fImsgid\fP in each of the locales in turn. This is a GNU |
| extension. |
| .PP |
| In the "C" locale, or if none of the used catalogs contain a translation for |
| \fImsgid\fP, the \fBgettext\fP, \fBdgettext\fP and \fBdcgettext\fP functions |
| return \fImsgid\fP. |
| .SH "RETURN VALUE" |
| If a translation was found in one of the specified catalogs, it is converted |
| to the locale's codeset and returned. The resulting string is statically |
| allocated and must not be modified or freed. Otherwise \fImsgid\fP is returned. |
| .SH ERRORS |
| \fBerrno\fP is not modified. |
| .SH BUGS |
| The return type ought to be \fBconst char *\fP, but is \fBchar *\fP to avoid |
| warnings in C code predating ANSI C. |
| .PP |
| When an empty string is used for \fImsgid\fP, the functions may return a |
| nonempty string. |
| .SH "SEE ALSO" |
| .BR ngettext (3), |
| .BR dngettext (3), |
| .BR dcngettext (3), |
| .BR setlocale (3), |
| .BR textdomain (3), |
| .BR bindtextdomain (3), |
| .BR bind_textdomain_codeset (3), |
| .BR msgfmt (1) |
