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When GNU gettext will truly have reached its goal, average users
should feel some kind of astonished pleasure, seeing the effect of
that strange kind of magic that just makes their own native language
appear everywhere on their screens. As for naive users, they would
ideally have no special pleasure about it, merely taking their own
language for granted, and becoming rather unhappy otherwise.
So, let's try to describe here how we would like the magic to operate,
as we want the users' view to be the simplest, among all ways one
could look at GNU gettext. All other software engineers:
programmers, translators, maintainers, should work together in such a
way that the magic becomes possible. This is a long and progressive
undertaking, and information is available about the progress of the
Translation Project.
When a package is distributed, there are two kinds of users:
installers who fetch the distribution, unpack it, configure
it, compile it and install it for themselves or others to use; and
end users that call programs of the package, once these have
been installed at their site. GNU gettext is offering magic
for both installers and end users.
9.1 The Current `ABOUT-NLS' Matrix 9.2 Magic for Installers 9.3 Magic for End Users