gettext-1.0

[Bruce Dubbs]

New major version.

Wow. This package has been around since 2001 and they finally went from version 0.26.0 to 1.0 although it has been steadily updated for the whole time.

[Bruce Dubbs]

Version 1.0 - January 2026

# Improvements for maintainers and distributors:

• In a po/ directory, the PO files are now exactly those that the translators submitted or committed in version control, or a translation project's daemon committed on behalf of the translators. They are no longer regularly updated with respect to the POT file in the same directory.

The advantage for maintainers is that the maintainer may commit the PO files in version control, without getting

• lots of modified files shown by "git status",
• frequent merge conflicts when merging between branches,
• a voluminous version control history.

The advantage for distributors is that the role of files in a release tarball are clearer: The PO files are source code, whereas the POT file and the *.gmo files are generated files.

ATTENTION translators! Translators who work directly on a package's source code (without going through a translation project) now need to run "msginit" before starting work on a PO file.

• A new program 'po-fetch' is provided, that fetches the translated PO files from a translation project's site on the internet, and updates the LINGUAS file accordingly.

• In a po/ directory, a new script 'fetch-po' is now added by 'gettextize'. It provides the standard interface for fetching the translated PO files. It typically either invokes the 'po-fetch' program or does nothing.

# Improvements for translators:

• msginit:
  • When the PO file already exists, 'msginit' now updates it w.r.t. the POT file, like 'msgmerge' would do. Previously, 'msginit' failed with an error message in this situation.

• Pretranslation:
  • Two new programs, 'msgpre' and 'spit', are provided, that implement machine translation through a locally installed Large Language Model (LLM). 'msgpre' applies to an entire PO file, 'spit' to a single message.
  • The documentation has a new chapter "Pretranslation".

# Improvements for maintainers:

• xgettext:
  • The refactoring suggestion when a translatable string contains an URL or email address can now be inhibited through a command-line option '--no-check=url' or '--no-check=email', or through a comment in the source code of the form

/* xgettext: no-url-check */

or

/* xgettext: no-email-check */

# Programming languages support:

• OCaml:
  • xgettext now supports OCaml.
  • 'msgfmt -c' now verifies the syntax of translations of OCaml format strings.
  • A new example 'hello-ocaml' has been added.
• Rust:
  • xgettext now recognizes 'gettextrs::gettext' invocations, like 'gettext' invocations.

# libgettextpo library:

• The function 'po_message_get_format' now supports distinguishing whether a negative format string mark, such as 'no-c-format', is set or not.
• The new functions

po_message_has_workflow_flag po_message_set_workflow_flag po_message_workflow_flags_iterator, po_flag_next, po_flag_iterator_free

can be used to manipulate or inspect the workflow flags of a message.

• The new functions

po_message_has_sticky_flag po_message_set_sticky_flag po_message_sticky_flags_iterator, po_flag_next, po_flag_iterator_free

can be used to manipulate or inspect the sticky flags of a messsage.

# Emacs PO mode:

Restore syntax highlighting in Emacs version 30 or newer.