Subject: Call for Internationalization Volunteers.
From: Mitchum DSouza <[email-masked]>
Date: 14 Dec 1993 15:58:51 +0200
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce

This is a call for volunteers to Internationalize the new upcoming libc.

In an effort to push Linux further and to the farthest corners of the globe,
you may know (if you follow the GCC channel) that the standard C library,
(yet to be released), has now been internationalized. This means anyone is
able to produce the standard system messages in the language of their choice
(with the appropriate catalog of course) or to change them in any shape or
content.

For English speakers no catalog is required and defaults to the standard
english messages if no catalog or a corrupt catalog is found.

For standard Linux distributions (SLS, Debian, Slackware, MCC etc...) the
appropriate language catalog may be dispatched depending on the country
of distribution.

Since the catalogs will accept all supported charsets, then the standard ANSI
sequences are also available. This means for those who are into this kind of
thing, color'ed messages are also feasable. 

The catalog generator has been uploaded to:

	Site:		sunsite.unc.edu
	Dir:		/pub/Linux/utils/nls
	Filename:	cat-pack.tar.gz

The catalog generator is NOT libc specific. It can, for example, generate
message catalogs for ELM-24 and other software which supports
Internationalization.

Please upload finished catalogs to

	Site:		sunsite.unc.edu
	Dir:		/pub/Linux/utils/nls/catalogs/Incoming
	Filename:	<language>.cat (e.g. french.cat, german.cat)

Thanx are due to Erik Troan and all the sunsite maintainers for this service.

You are welcome to put up fun/color/jive messages should that take your fancy.

***********************[ Type of person sought ]******************************

You should be fairly fluent in the language of choice and have some technical
understanding of the system messages to provide accurate translations.

Full README and walk-through's are provided.

Once you have retrieved cat-pack, for a fast demo (and if you are german):
(You must have libc.so.4.5.x and above - TO BE RELEASED)

	% tar xfz cat-pack.tar.gz
	% cd cat-pack
	% make german
	% setenv NLSPATH `pwd`/%N.cat
	% touch /

As a normal user that should give you "Permission Denied" in German. If the
catalog is installed in the default location then there is no need to set
NLSPATH environment variable.

The cataloging functions are now included as standard in `libc' and one
hopes that this encourages software developers to broaden their view and
provide international software in this brave new world.

Mitch
[email-masked]

P.S. It seems that at some time in the future Linux will support UNICODE/ISO
10646 which may be in X11R6 and is currently in inferior systems like
MS-Windoze No-Thanks :-) This basically will open up the world to Linux.

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