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- - -
-We would like to conclude this GNU gettext manual by presenting
-an history of the Translation Project so far. We finally give
-a few pointers for those who want to do further research or readings
-about Native Language Support matters.
-
-
gettext
-Internationalization concerns and algorithms have been informally
-and casually discussed for years in GNU, sometimes around GNU
-libc, maybe around the incoming Hurd, or otherwise
-(nobody clearly remembers). And even then, when the work started for
-real, this was somewhat independently of these previous discussions.
-
-
-This all began in July 1994, when Patrick D'Cruze had the idea and
-initiative of internationalizing version 3.9.2 of GNU fileutils.
-He then asked Jim Meyering, the maintainer, how to get those changes
-folded into an official release. That first draft was full of
-#ifdefs and somewhat disconcerting, and Jim wanted to find
-nicer ways. Patrick and Jim shared some tries and experimentations
-in this area. Then, feeling that this might eventually have a deeper
-impact on GNU, Jim wanted to know what standards were, and contacted
-Richard Stallman, who very quickly and verbally described an overall
-design for what was meant to become glocale, at that time.
-
-
-Jim implemented glocale and got a lot of exhausting feedback
-from Patrick and Richard, of course, but also from Mitchum DSouza
-(who wrote a catgets-like package), Roland McGrath, maybe David
-MacKenzie, Fran@,{c}ois Pinard, and Paul Eggert, all pushing and
-pulling in various directions, not always compatible, to the extent
-that after a couple of test releases, glocale was torn apart.
-
-
-While Jim took some distance and time and became dad for a second
-time, Roland wanted to get GNU libc internationalized, and
-got Ulrich Drepper involved in that project. Instead of starting
-from glocale, Ulrich rewrote something from scratch, but
-more conformant to the set of guidelines who emerged out of the
-glocale effort. Then, Ulrich got people from the previous
-forum to involve themselves into this new project, and the switch
-from glocale to what was first named msgutils, renamed
-nlsutils, and later gettext, became officially accepted
-by Richard in May 1995 or so.
-
-
-Let's summarize by saying that Ulrich Drepper wrote GNU gettext
-in April 1995. The first official release of the package, including
-PO mode, occurred in July 1995, and was numbered 0.7. Other people
-contributed to the effort by providing a discussion forum around
-Ulrich, writing little pieces of code, or testing. These are quoted
-in the THANKS file which comes with the GNU gettext
-distribution.
-
-
-While this was being done, Fran@,{c}ois adapted half a dozen of
-GNU packages to glocale first, then later to gettext,
-putting them in pretest, so providing along the way an effective
-user environment for fine tuning the evolving tools. He also took
-the responsibility of organizing and coordinating the Translation
-Project. After nearly a year of informal exchanges between people from
-many countries, translator teams started to exist in May 1995, through
-the creation and support by Patrick D'Cruze of twenty unmoderated
-mailing lists for that many native languages, and two moderated
-lists: one for reaching all teams at once, the other for reaching
-all willing maintainers of internationalized free software packages.
-
-
-Fran@,{c}ois also wrote PO mode in June 1995 with the collaboration
-of Greg McGary, as a kind of contribution to Ulrich's package.
-He also gave a hand with the GNU gettext Texinfo manual.
-
-
-Eugene H. Dorr (`dorre@well.com') maintains an interesting -bibliography on internationalization matters, called -Internationalization Reference List, which is available as: - -
-ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/examples/nutshell/ujip/doc/i18n-books.txt -- -
-Michael Gschwind (`mike@vlsivie.tuwien.ac.at') maintains a -Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list, entitled Programming for -Internationalisation. This FAQ discusses writing programs which -can handle different language conventions, character sets, etc.; -and is applicable to all character set encodings, with particular -emphasis on ISO 8859-1. It is regularly published in Usenet -groups `comp.unix.questions', `comp.std.internat', -`comp.software.international', `comp.lang.c', -`comp.windows.x', `comp.std.c', `comp.answers' -and `news.answers'. The home location of this document is: - -
-ftp://ftp.vlsivie.tuwien.ac.at/pub/8bit/ISO-programming -- -
-Patrick D'Cruze (`pdcruze@li.org') wrote a tutorial about NLS -matters, and Jochen Hein (`Hein@student.tu-clausthal.de') took -over the responsibility of maintaining it. It may be found as: - -
-ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/utils/nls/catalogs/Incoming/... - ...locale-tutorial-0.8.txt.gz -- -
-This site is mirrored in: - -
-ftp://ftp.ibp.fr/pub/linux/sunsite/ -- -
-A French version of the same tutorial should be findable at: - -
-ftp://ftp.ibp.fr/pub/linux/french/docs/ -- -
-together with French translations of many Linux-related documents. - -
--
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