----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Candler" <B.Candler / pobox.com>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk / ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 8:48 AM
Subject: Re: Message catalogs (I18N) overnight hack...


> It seemed strange to me that a 'make' utility would have a dependency on
an
> XML parser. It turns out that gettext is the GNU way to deal with this:
>
> [man gettext]

I know about this, but I still like the low-impact
approach. Obviously the message catalog prep takes
some time/effort; but I like the fact that most/many
apps will only require *two* extra lines of code,
and no other changes in the code itself.

> That approach makes logical sense to me - decouple *all* language text
from
> the source, rather than have language A in the source and languages
A,B,C,D
> in the translation database. (Otherwise, whenever you change a message in
> the source you'd have to update the corresponding language A entry - a
> violation of the DRY principle).

Now THAT is a good point.

Ooh, a violation of DRY. Don't tell Dave!!

On the other hand, does gettext have the notion of "default"
text? I think it must. (What is used if *no* message catalog
can be found?) That would still have to be kept synchronized
between the source and the catalogs.

Hal