Re: Include AM_GTK_WITH_NLS in gtk.m4?

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik pobox com>]

On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Damon Chaplin wrote:
> But what's the point?
> If the user wants i18n they will already have installed the gettext library
> before installing GTK+ (or they may have support in their OS/libc anyway).

> Maybe in the past when gettext was rarely used and being changed frequently
> it was useful to include it in applications. But now that we're using it
> everywhere, why duplicate it?

Gtk+ and gnome-libs present a problem - you can't distribute and install
libintl with a library.  So, if a system doesn't have libintl, you don't
get internationalization in the libs.

Consider a system missing libintl.  On that system, the app developer
can choose to (a) disable NLS, or (b) bundle libintl in the application
package, and embed that in the compiled binary.

Option (a) means no internationalization at all.
Option (b) means no internationalization in Gtk+, but the app can still
take advantage of gettext for its own messaging.

Option (b) seems far better than no internationalization at all.

	Jeff