Re: i18n

[Sam S. <sd...@gn...>]

> * Bruno Haible <oe...@py...> [2011-08-24 18:01:09 +0200]:
>
> Sam wrote:
>> BTW, could you please explain this comment:
>>
>> /* Given the above, the following line is only needed for those platforms
>> for which gettext is compiled with HAVE_LOCALE_NULL defined. */
>
> On glibc systems, setlocale(cat,NULL) is known to return a locale string in the
> expected format, and locales can be created by users. Therefore gettext()
> uses setlocale(); on the other platforms gettext() relies on the environment
> variables and the setlocale() call is therefore actually redundant.

So what happens on those non-glibc systems where this call is redundant?
Is NULL returned?

>> At any rate, apparently you do not object to moving init_language past
>> initmem and letting it indicate a failure as long as it does not prevent
>> clisp from starting up.
>
> I'm not sure there aren't GETTEXT or GETTEXTL calls during initmem
> or the rest of the start-up.

yes, there are some.

> If there are some, it seems safer to me to
>   - continue to call init_language as early as it is now,
>   - but store its result or success in some variable, and
>   - emit the warning message after everything is initialized.

I want the warning to be more specific, so, I guess, init_language will
have to take a flag arg indicating whether to warn with fprintf or
signal with ERROR.

>> 4. bind_textdomain_codeset --> errno != 0 (may return NULL on success!)
>
> This function can fail if malloc fails. I'm not aware that it could return NULL on success.

RETURN VALUE
       If successful, the bind_textdomain_codeset function returns the current
       codeset  for domain domainname, after possibly changing it. The result-
       ing string is valid until the next bind_textdomain_codeset call for the
       same  domainname and must not be modified or freed. If a memory alloca-
       tion failure occurs, it sets errno to ENOMEM and returns  NULL.  If  no
       codeset has been set for domain domainname, it returns NULL.

I find the combination of the last two sentences confusing.
They appear to indicate that either
 -- NULL return value does not necessarily indicate failure (e.g., if
    nothing has changed)
 -- It is possible that NULL is returned (i.e., the call failed) but
    errno is not set.
The first option seems to actually contradict the first sentence, so, I
guess, the second is correct. Right?
Or, just like with bindtextdomain & textdomain, NULL return value ==
failure, and the manual page should be fixed?

-- 
Sam Steingold (http://sds.podval.org/) on CentOS release 5.6 (Final) X 11.0.60900031
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