Hi,

On Wed, 2 Jul 2003 02:39:59 +0900
"Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000 / hypermetrics.com> wrote:

> ----- 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...
> 

> 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

Usually, gettext uses a English message as a msgid.
And msgid is written in the source code.

the example of Ruby-GetText-Package below:

puts _("Hello World")  # "Hello World" is a msgid

If the localized-message can't be find, 
msgid is used as the message.

puts _("Hello Wold") #=> "KONNICHIWA SEKAI" #Found(Japanese)
puts _("Hello Wold") #=> "Hello World"      #Not Found


For synchronizing the sources and catalogs, 
GNU GetText provides some tools like as msgmerge.

BTW,
The manual of GNU GetText may help you.
http://www.gnu.org/manual/gettext/html_chapter/gettext_toc.html

-- 
.:% Masao Mutoh<mutoh / highway.ne.jp>