Editing Gettext (section)

==History==
Initially, POSIX provided no means of localizing messages. Two proposals were raised in the late 1980s, the 1988 Uniforum gettext and the 1989 X/Open catgets (XPG-3 § 5). [[Sun Microsystems]] implemented the first gettext in 1993.<ref name=sun /> The Unix and POSIX developers never really agreed on what kind of interface to use (the other option is the X/Open catgets), so many [[C library|C libraries]], including [[glibc]], implemented both.<ref>{{cite web |title=Message Translation |url=https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Message-Translation.html |website=The GNU C Library}}</ref> {{As of|2019|08}}, whether gettext should be part of POSIX was still a point of debate in the [[Austin Group]], despite the fact that its old foe has already fallen out of use. Concerns cited included its dependence on the system-set locale (a [[global variable]] subject to multithreading problems) and its support for newer C-language extensions involving wide strings.<ref>{{cite web |title=0001122: POSIX should include gettext() and friends - Austin Group Defect Tracker |url=http://austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=1122 |website=Austin Group Defect Tracker}}</ref>

The [[GNU Project]] decided that the message-as-key approach of gettext is simpler and more friendly. (Most other systems, including catgets, requires the developer to come up with "key" names for every string.)<ref>{{cite web |title=The Programmer's View |url=http://ftp.gnu.org/old-gnu/Manuals/gettext-0.10.35/html_chapter/gettext_8.html |website=gettext 0.10.35| date=30 April 1998}}</ref> They released GNU gettext, a [[free software]] implementation of the system in 1995.<ref name=history /> Gettext, GNU or not, has since been ported to many programming languages.<ref>{{cite web |title=GNU gettext utilities: List of Programming Languages |url=https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/List-of-Programming-Languages.html#List-of-Programming-Languages}}</ref> The simplicity of po and widespread editor support even lead to its adoption in non-program contexts for text documents or as an intermediate between other localization formats, with converters like po4a (po for anything) and Translate Toolkit emerging to provide such a bridge.<ref>{{cite web |title=po4a |url=https://po4a.org/index.php.en |website=po4a.org}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=The essential toolkit for localization engineers |url=https://toolkit.translatehouse.org/ |website=Translate Toolkit}}</ref>