Re: Gettext solution (Was: Re: gettext packages)

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Wed, 2 Jun 1999, Julian Gilbey wrote:

> > On Mon, 31 May 1999, Julian Gilbey wrote:
> > 
> > > I really would like to see gettext as being considered an important
> > > package.  As Debian increasingly provides internationalised programs,
> > > a Good Thing, it is going to be increasingly annoying always to have
> > > to either check for gettext's presence or to Depend upon it.
> > [...]
> 
> After contacting the gettext author, a far better solution has
> presented itself than using the gettext script directly: use bash for
> any i18n shell scripts and the $"..." syntax of bash.  This calls the
> gettext intl library directly (via libc) without needing any external
> binaries.  This is, of course, the canonical correct solution to the
> problem, rendering this whole feature request unnecessary.

I for one do not think it is wise to convert every /bin/sh script into
/bin/bash just for make it i18n.

Remember that there are a lot of people who likes to make /bin/sh
a symlink to ash (which aims for POSIX compliance). If we start making
a lot of shell scripts /bin/bash, even if bash is currently essential,
we will lose the benefits given by a smaller shell as /bin/sh.

Thanks.

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