mingw/gettext/NEWS

Version 0.21.1 - April 2021

* PO file format:
  - When a #: line contains references to file names that contain spaces,
    these file names are surrounded by Unicode characters U+2068 and U+2069.
    This makes it possible to parse such references correctly.

* Programming languages support:
  - C, C++: xgettext now supports gettext-like functions that take wide strings
    (of type 'const wchar_t *', 'const char16_t *', or 'const char32_t *') as
    arguments.

* Runtime behaviour:
  - On AIX, locale names with a script or with an uppercase language are now
    supported.
    For example, sr_Cyrl_RS.UTF-8 is treated like sr_RS.UTF-8@cyrillic, and
    EN_US.UTF-8 is treated like en_US.UTF-8.

* Portability:
  - Building on macOS 11/arm64 is now supported.

Version 0.21 - July 2020

* Programming languages support:
  - Shell:
    o xgettext now recognizes and ignores 'env' invocations and environment
      variable assignments in front of commands.
  - Java:
    o xgettext now recognizes format strings in the Formatter syntax.  They
      are marked as 'java-printf-format' in POT and PO files.
    o xgettext now recognizes text blocks as string literals.
  - JavaScript:
    xgettext parses JSX expressions more reliably.
  - Ruby:
    o xgettext now supports Ruby.
    o 'msgfmt -c' now verifies the syntax of translations of Ruby format
      strings.

* Runtime behaviour:
  - On native Windows platforms, the directory that contains the message
    catalogs may now contain arbitrary Unicode characters. To make use of
    this feature, use the new function 'wbindtextdomain' instead of
    'bindtextdomain'. It allows to pass a directory name in wchar_t[] encoding.
    Note: 'wbindtextdomain' exists only on native Windows platforms.

* Improvements for translators:
  - When msgfmt writes a MO file, it now does so in such a way that processes
    that are currently using an older copy of the MO file will not crash.

* Libtextstyle:
  - Added support for emitting hyperlinks.
  - New API for doing formatted output.
  - The example programs support the NO_COLOR environment variable.

Version 0.20.2 - April 2020

* Improvements for maintainers:
  - A dependency bug in po/Makefile.in.in has been fixed.

* Programming languages support:
  - Shell:
    o The programs 'gettext', 'ngettext', when invoked with option -e, now
      expand '\\' and octal escape sequences, instead of swallowing them.
      (Bug present since the beginning.)
    o xgettext now recognizes 'gettext' program invocations with the '-e'
      option, such as
        gettext -e 'some\nstring\n'
  - Python:
    xgettext now assumes a Python source file is in UTF-8 encoding by default,
    as stated in PEP 3120.
  - Desktop Entry:
    The value of the 'Icon' property is no longer extracted into the POT file
    by xgettext.  The documentation explains how to localize icons.

* Runtime behaviour:
  - The interpretation of the language preferences on macOS has been improved,
    especially in the case where a system locale does not exist for the
    combination of the selected primary language and the selected territory.
  - Fixed a multithread-safety bug on Cygwin and native Windows.

* Libtextstyle:
  - Fixed a number of bugs (by upgrading libcroco to version 0.6.13).

Version 0.20.1 - May 2019

* Important bug fix:
  - Fixed a wrong shared library versioning of libintl.so.

Version 0.20 - May 2019

* Support for reproducible builds:
  - msgfmt now eliminates the POT-Creation-Date header field from .mo files.

* Improvements for translators:
  - update-po target in Makefile.in.in now uses msgmerge --previous.

* Improvements for maintainers:
  - msgmerge now has an option --for-msgfmt, that produces a PO file meant
    for use by msgfmt only.  This option saves processing time, in particular
    by omitting fuzzy matching that is not useful in this situation.
  - The .pot file in a 'po' directory is now erased by "make maintainer-clean".
  - It is now possible to override xgettext options from the po/Makefile.in.in
    through options in XGETTEXT_OPTIONS (declared in po/Makevars).
  - The --intl option of the gettextize program (deprecated since 2010) is
    no longer available. Instead of including the intl sources in your package,
    we suggest making the libintl library an optional prerequisite of your
    package. This will simplify the build system of your package.
  - Accordingly, the Autoconf macro AM_GNU_GETTEXT_INTL_SUBDIR is gone as well.

* Programming languages support:
  - C, C++:
    xgettext now supports strings in u8"..." syntax, as specified in C11
    and C++11.
  - C, C++:
    xgettext now supports 'p'/'P' exponent markers in number tokens, as
    specified in C99 and C++17.
  - C++:
    xgettext now supports underscores in number tokens.
  - C++:
    xgettext now supports single-quotes in number tokens, as specified in
    C++14.
  - Shell:
    o The programs 'gettext', 'ngettext' now support a --context argument.
    o gettext.sh contains new function eval_pgettext and eval_npgettext
      for producing translations of messages with context.
  - Java:
    o xgettext now supports UTF-8 encoded .properties files (a new feature
      of Java 9).
    o The build system and tools now support Java 9, 10, and 11. On the
      other hand, support for old versions of Java (Java 5 and older,
      GCJ 4.2.x and older) has been dropped.
  - Perl:
    o Native support for context functions (pgettext, dpgettext, dcpgettext,
      npgettext, dnpgettext, dcnpgettext).
    o better detection of question mark and slash as operators (as opposed 
      to regular expression delimiters).
  - Scheme:
    xgettext now parses the syntax for specialized byte vectors (#u8(...),
    #vu8(...), etc.) correctly.
  - Pascal:
    xgettext can now extract strings from .rsj files, produced by the
    Free Pascal compiler version 3.0.0 or newer.
  - Vala:
    xgettext now parses escape sequences in strings more accurately.
  - JavaScript:
    xgettext now parses template literals correctly.

* Runtime behaviour:
  - The interpretation of the language preferences on macOS has been fixed.
  - Per-thread locales are now also supported on Solaris 11.4.
  - The replacements for the printf()/fprintf()/... functions that are
    provided through <libintl.h> on native Windows and NetBSD are now POSIX
    compliant.  There is no conflict any more between these replacements
    and other possible replacements provided by gnulib or mingw.

* Libtextstyle:
  - This package installs a new library 'libtextstyle', together with a new
    header file <textstyle.h>.  It is a library for styling text output sent
    to a console or terminal emulator.
    Packagers: please see the suggested packaging hints in the file PACKAGING.

Version 0.19.8 - June 2016

* Support for reproducible builds:
  - msgfmt now produces little-endian .mo files by default.

* Programming languages support:
  - XML:
    xgettext and msgfmt now look for .its files in directories
    supplied through the GETTEXTDATADIRS or XDG_DATA_DIRS environment
    variable.
  - JavaScript:
    xgettext and msgfmt now recognize numbered arguments in format
    strings.

* Portability:
  - Improve OS/2 kLIBC support.
  - Fix libintl compilation issue with pre-C99 compilers.  It was a
    regression since 0.19.5.
  - The AM_GNU_GETTEXT Autoconf macro can now detect musl-libc's
    gettext as a compatible implementation.

Version 0.19.7 - December 2015

* Programming languages support:
  - XML:
    xgettext can now load custom string extraction rules supplied by
    consumer projects.  The rules are written in XML, utilizing the
    Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) standard.  All the existing
    XML-based language scanners (Glade, GSettings, and AppData) are
    rewritten using ITS.  In addition, msgfmt now has --xml option to
    merge translations back to the original XML document.

* Portability:
  - Improve OS/2 kLIBC support (still not complete)
  - Remove dependency on expat

Version 0.19.6 - September 2015

* Programming languages support:
  - AppData:
    xgettext now supports AppData file format, used by software center
    applications (e.g., GNOME Software) to describe installable
    applications.

* A new macro AM_GNU_GETTEXT_REQUIRE_VERSION can be used to indicate
  autopoint to pull the latest available infrastructure, instead of
  the exact version specified with AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION.  When
  AM_GNU_GETTEXT_REQUIRE_VERSION is used, AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION is
  ignored.

* po/Makefile.in.in can now insert the file $(DOMAIN).pot-header to
  $(DOMAIN).pot, instead of the standard header comments.

* Bug fixes:
  - Fix mishandling of gettext version numbers for minor releases, in
    po-mode.el and gettextize.
  - Fix build with --enable-relocatable.

Version 0.19.5 - July 2015

* xgettext now has a feature to perform syntax checks on msgid, which
  could enforce common styles of translatable strings, such as to
  prefer Unicode characters to the corresponding ASCII characters.
  They can be enabled with --check option or special "xgettext: "
  comment in the source code.  By default, no syntax checks are
  enabled.

* msgfilter and msgexec now have an option --newline, which appends a
  newline character to filter input and trims it from the filter
  output.  This would allow filter programs to be more POSIX friendly.

* The base Unicode standard is now updated to 8.0.0.  This
  particularly improves "\N{...}" notation handling of xgettext for
  Perl and Python.

* msginit is now capable of generating "Plural-Forms:" from Unicode
  CLDR.  This feature is still experimental, but you can try it by
  setting the GETTEXTCLDRDIR environment variable pointing to the
  directory where the CLDR archive is extracted.  The actual
  conversion is done by a helper program 'cldr-plural', which can be
  used as a generic converter and evaluator of CLDR plural forms.

* Programming languages support:
  - C++ with KDE: xgettext and msgfmt can now recognize KUIT (KDE User
    Interface Text) markup.  See the documentation section "KUIT
    Format Strings" for more info.
  - C++ with KDE: xgettext now recognizes all default KDE keywords.
    This removes the need for a long list of --keyword and --flag
    options to perform a reasonable extraction.

* Bug fixes:
  - xgettext C++11 raw string recognition is now stricter and don't
    accept unbalanced delimiters.
  - Suppress baseless warnings which msgfmt emits when processing a
    .desktop file.
  - xgettext line wrapping behaviour is now consistent between comment
    lines and non-comment lines.
  - Fix msgfilter-7 test failure on some platforms.
  - Fix VPATH build.

Version 0.19.4 - December 2014

* The --keyword option of xgettext now accepts same argument number
  for both singular and plural forms.

* Programming languages support:
  - C#: xgettext now properly handles Unicode characters encoded with
    surrogate pairs.
  - C/C++: xgettext now recognizes ISO/IEC 9899:2011 string literals
    prefixed by R, u8, u8R, u, uR, U, UR, L, or LR.
  - Shell: xgettext now properly recognizes Bash ANSI-C quoting ($'...').

* Bug fixes:
  - Fix integer overflow when reading certain MO files with msgunfmt.
  - Avoid invalid memory access in various cases.  In particular, when
    the same argument number is specified for singular/plural
    arguments, and when checking Lisp and Scheme format strings.

* Portability:
  - Building on Mac OS X 10.10 and AIX 7.1 is now supported.

Version 0.19.3 - October 2014

* Bug fixes:
  - Fix xgettext mishandling of octal character escapes in C.
  - Fix autopoint infinite recursion with certain configure.ac.

* The po/Makevars file has a new field MSGINIT_OPTIONS, that can be
  used to adjust msginit's operation.  This is particularly useful for
  controlling line wrapping behavior together with MSGMERGE_OPTIONS
  and XGETTEXT_OPTIONS.

* Portability:
  - Building on Solaris 10 and 11 with Solaris Studio compiler is now
    fixed.

Version 0.19.2 - July 2014

* Bug fixes:
  - Fix xgettext crash in parsing empty string literals in C and Vala.
  - ChangeLog file is added back to the gettext infrastructure.  It was
    mistakenly removed in 0.19.
  - Autoconf macro trace in autopoint now works again with Autoconf 2.68
    or earlier.  It was a regression in 0.19.

Version 0.19.1 - June 2014

* Programming languages support:

  - Desktop Entry:
    msgfmt now always reads the po/LINGUAS file, regardless of whether
    the LINGUAS environment variable is set.  The variable can now be
    used to restrict the languages list read from the po/LINGUAS file.

  - Vala:
    Bug fix in xgettext handling of "//" in string literals.  This was
    a regression after the C-99 Unicode escape support.

* The po/Makevars.template file now contains the newly added variables.

* msgfmt now treats errors in the PO file header as non-fatal.  Since
  0.19 msgfmt started to abort on the fatal errors, but some
  translation systems are still not ready to supply valid headers.

* Future backward-incompatibilities:
  - In future Gettext versions, msgfmt will treat header errors as
    fatal and terminate the command execution.

Version 0.19 - June 2014

* Programming languages support:

  - Desktop Entry:
    xgettext and msgfmt now support .desktop files, used by desktop
    applications, as input and output.

  - GSettings:
    xgettext now supports GSettings schema file format used by GNOME
    applications.

  - JavaScript:
    xgettext now recognizes E4X (ECMA-357) constructs.

  - PHP:
    Single and double quotes around heredoc markers are now recognized.

  - Python:
    The acceptable format specifiers in the braced-syntax format
    strings are now limited to the Standard Format Specifiers, to
    reasonably avoid false-positives.

  - Scheme:
    The gettext shorthand form _"abc", used by GIMP script-fu, is now
    recognized by xgettext.

  - C and Vala:
    xgettext now recognizes C99-style Unicode character escapes.

* The --add-location option of msgattrib, msgcat, msgcomm, msgconv,
  msgen, msgfilter, msggrep, msgmerge, msguniq, and xgettext commands
  now takes an optional argument 'never', 'full', or 'file', to
  control the format of "#: ..." comments.

* msgfmt now has --source option to keep generated .java file when
  running in Java mode.

* msgattrib now has --empty option that sets msgstr to empty when
  clearing fuzzy flag.

* msgexec and msgfilter pass the plural information to subprocess
  through the environment variable MSG{EXEC,FILTER}_MSGID_PLURAL and
  MSG{EXEC,FILTER}_PLURAL_FORM.

* New built-in filters 'quot' and 'boldquot' have been added to
  msgfilter.  These filters convert Latin quotation marks ('...',
  "...") into Unicode quotation marks (for example, U+2018) if
  possible, similar to the sed commands used in po/Rules-quot and
  po/Rules-boldquot.

* The po/Makevars file has a couple of new options PO_DEPENDS_ON_POT
  and DIST_DEPENDS_ON_UPDATE_PO, that can be used to adjust the
  behavior of updating PO files on demand.

* xgettext now strips prefixed string before the comment tag.  This is
  useful to support C-style comment like this:

  /*
   * TRANSLATORS: first line
   * second line
   */

  In this example, the extracted comment does not contain "* " at the
  beginning of each line.

* libgettextpo library:
  - Memory leak fixes in the PO file parser.

* Documentation:
  - A complete example showing the use of GNU gettext in a GNOME 3
    application has been added.


Version 0.18.3 - July 2013

* Runtime behaviour:
  On Mac OS X systems, the setlocale() function now properly
  invalidates loaded message catalogs when a locale has been set.

* Programming languages support:

  - C++:
    The gnu::autosprintf class now provides an assignment operator.

  - Glade:
    xgettext now supports GtkBuider file format used by Glade 3.
    xgettext now also extracts contexts (msgctxt) from Glade 2 and
    GtkBuider files.

  - JavaScript:
    xgettext now partially supports JavaScript.  Since the current
    JavaScript specification (ECMA-262) does not define the standard
    set of formatting methods nor translation functions, the
    implementation supports only a limited set of formatting methods
    and translation functions commonly used in Gjs and other popular
    JavaScript implemenations and libraries.

  - Lua:
    xgettext now supports Lua, using Ľubomír Remák's lua-gettext.

  - Python:
    xgettext and msgfmt's format string checking now recognize Python
    format string in braced syntax (PEP 3101).  xgettext now also
    supports explicit string concatenation with '+' and handles
    platform dependent line terminators (LF/CR/CRLF) transparently.

  - Tcl:
    Bug fix in xgettext Unicode escape handling.

  - Vala:
    xgettext now supports Vala.

* msgattrib now has --previous option to keep previous msgid when
  making messages fuzzy, similar to msgmerge --previous.

* msgfmt now checks PO file headers more strictly with less
  false-positives.

* 'gettextize' now checks macro directories specified with
  AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIRS in configure.ac.

* Portability:
  - msginit now does not require GNU sed.
  - The Makefile rule for generating en@quot and en@boldquot now uses
    @SED@ variable instead of hard-coded 'sed' command to allow users
    to supply GNU sed.

* Future backward-incompatibilities:
  - In future Gettext versions, the files installed by 'gettextize'
    will require Automake 1.10 or later.  This will improve the
    compatibility of user projects with newer Automake versions.

Version 0.18.2 - December 2012

* xgettext now understands the block comment syntax of Guile 2.0.

* libgettextpo library:
  - The initial msgstr of a new message is now "", not NULL.
  - Bug fixes in the functions po_message_is_range, po_file_check_all,
    po_message_check_all.

* Installation options:
  The configure options --with-xz and --with-bzip2 can be used to specify
  alternate compression methods for the archive used by the 'autopoint'
  program. These options, together with --with-git, allow to trade
  dependencies against installed package size. --with-xz has the highest
  compression rate, followed by --with-git, followed by --with-bzip2.

* Autoconf macros:
  - The autoconf macros installed by 'gettextize' now work with the
    forthcoming Automake 1.14 and require Autoconf version 2.60 or
    newer.

* Portability:
  - Building on MacOS X 10.7, Cygwin 1.7.10, and newer 64-bit mingw is
    now supported.

Version 0.18.1 - June 2010

* msggrep: A '$' anchor in a regular expression now also matches the end of
  the string, even if it does not end in a newline.

* Dependencies:
  The libraries and programs are now linked with libunistring if this library
  is already installed.

* Installation options:
  The configure option --with-cvs is deprecated. The 'autopoint' program will
  now use the 'git' program by default to compress its archive. If the
  configure option --without-git is specified, 'autopoint' will not rely on
  'git', but will instead rely on a locally installed a 3 MB large archive.

Version 0.18 - May 2010

* Runtime behaviour:
  - On MacOS X and Windows systems, <libintl.h> now extends setlocale() and
    newlocale() so that their determination of the default locale considers
    the choice the user has made in the system control panels.
  - On MacOS X systems, the gettext()/dgettext()/... functions now respect the
    locale of the current thread, if a thread-specific locale has been set.

* PO file format:
  There is a new field 'Language' in the header entry.  It denotes the language
  code (plus optional country code) for the PO file.  This field can be used
  by automated tools, such as spell checkers.  It is expected to be more
  reliable than looking at the file name or at the 'Language-Team' field in
  the header entry.
  msgmerge, msgcat, msgen have a new option --lang that allows to specify
  this field.  Additionally, msgmerge fills in this new field by looking at
  the 'Language-Team' field (if the --lang option is not given).

* xgettext and PO file format:
  For messages with plural forms, programmers can inform the translators
  about the range of possible values of the numeric argument, like this:
    /* xgettext: range: 0..15 */
  This information 'range: 0..15' is stored in the PO file as a flag attached
  to the message.  Translators can produce better translations when they know
  that the numeric argument is small.

* Colorized PO files:
  msgattrib, msgcomm, msgconv, msgen, msgfilter, msggrep, msginit, msgmerge,
  msgunfmt, msguniq, xgettext now have options --color and --style, like msgcat
  has since version 0.17.

* msgmerge is up to 10 times faster when the PO and POT files are large.
  This speedup was contributed by Ralf Wildenhues.

* msgcmp has a new option -N/--no-fuzzy-matching, like msgmerge has since
  version 0.12.

* msgfilter now sets environment variables during the invocation of the
  filter, indicating the msgid and location of the messge being processed.

* xgettext now can extract plural forms from Qt 4 programs. The recommended
  xgettext command-line options for this case are:
    --qt --keyword=tr:1,1t --keyword=tr:1,2c,2t --keyword=tr:1,1,2c,3t

* xgettext --language=GCC-source now recognizes also the format strings
  used in the Fortran front-end of the GCC compiler, and marks them as
  'gfc-internal-format'.

* autopoint can now be used to update several PO directories all together.

* PO mode changes:
  - PO files with plural entries are now correctly handled.
  - Editing a message with previous msgid (in comments) removes these
    comments.  Contributed by Noritada Kobayashi.

* The po/Makevars file has a new field MSGMERGE_OPTIONS, that can be used
  to adjust msgmerge's operation.

* The use of the macro AM_GNU_GETTEXT without 'external' argument and the
  --intl option of the gettextize program are deprecated and will be removed
  in the next release. Instead of including the intl sources in your package,
  we suggest making the libintl library an (optional) prerequisite of your
  package.

* Updated the meaning of 'gcc-internal-format' to match GCC 4.3.

* Installation options:
  The configure options --without-cvs and --with-git can be used to specify
  whether 'autopoint' will use the 'cvs' program, or the 'git' program, or
  none at all. These options allow to trade dependencies against installed
  package size: If --without-cvs is specified and --with-git is not specified,
  'autopoint' will not rely on 'cvs' or 'git', but will instead rely on a
  locally installed a 3 MB large archive.

* Portability:
  - The msgfilter program now also works on native Woe32 platforms.
  - Compiled C# message catalogs now also work with 'mono' versions from 2009
    or newer.

Version 0.17 - November 2007

* License:
  The gettext related programs and tools are now licensed under the GPL
  version 3, instead of the GPL version 2. The libintl library continues
  to be licensed under LGPL.

* PO file format:
  The Project-Id-Version field in the header entry may now already be filled
  in the POT file. In this case, the translators don't need to fill it in.
  xgettext has new options --package-name and --package-version that allow
  to specify the package name and version from a Makefile.

* Colorized PO files:
  The msgcat program has new options --color and --style that produce a
  colorized PO file output, where keywords, strings, comments, or format
  directives can be highlighted.  See the documentation section
  "Highlighting parts of PO files" for more info.

* gettextize now has a --po-dir option that allows several PO directories to
  be updated all together.

* Programming languages support:
  - Contexts (msgctxt) are now also supported for Java and C#.
  - C# with Qt: The support for Qt format strings has been updated for Qt 4.
  - C++ with KDE:
    xgettext has a new option --kde that triggers the recognition and marking
    of KDE 4 format strings.

* Autoconf macros:
  - A new macro AM_XGETTEXT_OPTION can be used as an alternative to modifying
    po/Makevars.

* libgettextpo library:
  - New functions are available for querying the list of supported format
    types.
  - The functions po_message_comments and po_message_extracted_comments
    return a multiline string where each line no longer starts with a redundant
    space. The leading space in every comment line is now stripped while
    reading the PO file.
  - Conversely, when you pass a multiline string to the function
    po_message_set_comments or po_message_set_extracted_comments, you normally
    don't pass a space at the beginning of each line, because such spaces are
    no longer trimmed during output.

* Documentation:
  - The "Users" chapter has been completely rewritten.
  - New section "Highlighting parts of PO files".
  - A complete example showing the use of GNU gettext in Java with the Qt/Jambi
    GUI toolkit has been added.

Version 0.16.1 - November 2006

* Bug fix in the gettext.m4 autoconf macros.

Version 0.16 - October 2006

* Interoperability with automake-1.10.

* msgmerge has a new option --previous that has the effect of saving the
  previous msgid of message when making them fuzzy. These previous msgids are
  stored in the resulting PO file, using a pseudo-comment syntax like this:

     #, fuzzy
     #| msgid "too many arguments"
     msgid "too few arguments"
     msgstr "trop d'arguments"

  The translator then only needs to compare the previous and the current
  msgid ("too many arguments" and "too few arguments"), and infer which
  parts of the translation she needs to change.

  msgattrib has a new option --clear-previous that removes these #| lines.

* msgmerge is faster now on CPUs with multiple execution units, if compiled
  with GCC 4.2 or newer.

* msgcmp now ignores fuzzy and untranslated messages in the PO file.
  Previously it considered fuzzy and untranslated messages the same way as
  translated messages, which was hardly useful.  The previous behaviour can
  be obtained through the options --use-fuzzy --use-untranslated.

* gettextize, when invoked without --intl option, now installs only the .m4
  files that are needed: gettext.m4, iconv.m4, lib-ld.m4, lib-link.m4,
  lib-prefix.m4, nls.m4, po.m4, progtest.m4.

* gettextize no longer creates symbolic links by default; it makes file copies
  instead.  The option --copy is removed.  You can get back the flawed
  symlinking behaviour by specifying the --symlink option.

* Autoconf macros:
  - The gettext autoconf macros now require autoconf 2.52 or newer and
    GNU m4 1.4.5 or newer.
  - A new autoconf macro AM_GNU_GETTEXT_INTL_SUBDIR is added. It allows to
    specify the presence of an intl/ subdirectory outside the AM_GNU_GETTEXT
    invocation.
  - A new autoconf macro AM_GNU_GETTEXT_NEED is added. It allows to specify
    the requirements relating to the GNU gettext implementation outside the
    AM_GNU_GETTEXT invocation.

* The libgettextpo library no longer exports symbols that could clash with
  symbols of the application that uses it.

* Vastly improved French translations. Thanks to Christophe Combelles.

Version 0.15 - July 2006

* GUI program support:
  - PO files can now contain messages constrained to a certain context.
    Most often such a context is a menu, dialog or panel identification.
    The syntax in the PO file is
      msgctxt "context"
      msgid "original"
      msgstr "translation"
  - The xgettext program can be told through the --keyword flag which
    function/macro argument has the role of a context.  It also supports
    the GNOME glib convention to specify the context and original string
    in the same string literal: "context|original".
  - The (non-public) include file gettext.h defines macros pgettext, dpgettext
    etc. that take a context argument.
  For more information, see the node "Contexts" in the manual.

* msgfmt's format string checking is now stricter in the presence of plural
  forms.  For example, in German, with  nplurals=2  and  plural=(n != 1),
  the translation

     #, c-format
     msgid "%d fatal error"
     msgid_plural "%d fatal errors"
     msgstr[0] "ein fataler Fehler"
     msgstr[1] "fatale Fehler"

  was earlier considered valid and now gives an error when "msgfmt --check"
  is used:
    "number of format specifications in 'msgid' and 'msgstr[1]' does not match"

* msggrep has a new option -v/--invert-match that acts like grep's -v option.

* msggrep has a new option -X/--extracted-comment that allows to search for a
  pattern in the extracted comments.

* xgettext's --keyword option now allows to specify an extracted comment on the
  command line, rather than in program's source code.

* msgmerge is much faster now, when using a large compendium.

* A new program recode-sr-latin is provided, that converts Serbian text from
  the Cyrillic script to the Latin script.
  The command "msgfilter recode-sr-latin" can be used to convert a Serbian
  Cyrillic PO file (sr.po) to a Serbian Latin PO file (sr@latin.po).

* Programming languages support:

  - C++ with Boost:
    xgettext has a new option --boost that triggers the recognition and marking
    of boost::format strings.

  - Python:
    xgettext now recognizes the source encoding from a "coding:" comment
    among the first two lines.  The default encoding is now ASCII, no longer
    ISO-8859-1.

* libgettextpo library:
  - The error handler type passed to po_file_read(), po_file_write(),
    po_message_check_format() has changed.
    This is an incompatible change: Programs using the library *must* update
    their code.
    Binary compatibility is guaranteed, however.

* The 'mkinstalldirs' shell script is no longer needed and no longer installed
  by gettextize.

* Portability:
  - Building on mingw is now supported.
  - Building shared libraries (--enable-shared) on Cygwin and mingw is now
    supported.

* Interoperability with expat version 2.0.0.

* Documentation:
  A complete example showing the use of GNU gettext with the wxWidgets GUI
  toolkit has been added.

* The gettext autoconf macros now assume 'aclocal' from automake 1.8 or newer.

Version 0.14.6 - June 2006

* Updated the meaning of 'gcc-internal-format' to match GCC 4.1.

Version 0.14.5 - May 2005

* Updated the meaning of 'gcc-internal-format' to match GCC 4.0.

Version 0.14.4 - April 2005

* The gettext autoconf macros will now work with the forthcoming g++ 4.0.
* Fix improved detection of the locale on MacOS X.

Version 0.14.3 - March 2005

* Usability improvements in gettextize and autopoint.

* Programming languages support:
  - Scheme:
    Use the GNU guile definition of format strings.

Version 0.14.2 - February 2005

* Improved detection of the locale on MacOS X.

* The gettext autoconf macros now require autoconf 2.50 or newer.

* Programming languages support:

  - Scheme:
    xgettext now also supports Scheme. Best used with guile 1.7 or newer.

* msggrep is much faster now.

* libgettextpo library:
  - New functions for constructing PO files in memory and writing them to
    files.
  - The error handling is now customizable.

* Documentation:

  - New tutorial document, written by Gora Mohanty.
  - New FAQ document.
  - New documentation sections: Scheme, Release Management.

* Bug fixes for Turkish and Estonian locales.

* Security fixes.

Version 0.14 - January 2004

* Programming languages support:

  - C#:

    xgettext now also supports C#.

    New library: GNU.Gettext.dll contains the runtime for using GNU gettext
    message catalogs in C#.

    msgfmt can create (and msgunfmt can dump) message catalogs for C#.

* Special feature for Farsi (Persian): Translators can insert an 'I' flag
  into numeric format directives in format strings. Its effect is that, on
  glibc systems, the number is generated with the locale dependent set of
  special digits instead of the usual ASCII digits.

* Documentation:

  - New documentation section: C#.
  - Complete examples illustrating the use of gettext in C# (in text mode and
    in Forms applications) have been added.

  - New documentation section: Preparing Library Sources.

* Special advice for Norwegian users: The language code for Norwegian
  bokmål changed from 'no' to 'nb' recently (in 2003). During the transition
  period, while some message catalogs for this language are installed under
  'nb' and some older ones under 'no', it's recommended for Norwegian users to
  set the LANGUAGE environment variable to 'nb:no' so that both newer and
  older translations are used.

Version 0.13.1 - December 2003

* Bug fixes in the testsuite and in the examples.

Version 0.13 - November 2003

* Programming languages support:

  - Shell:

    xgettext now also supports shell scripts. It recognizes invocations of
    the programs 'gettext', 'ngettext', the functions 'eval_gettext',
    'eval_ngettext', as well as the deprecated GNU bash builtin syntax $"...".
    New function library:
      gettext.sh - shell functions for internationalized shell scripts.
    New program:
      envsubst - substitutes environment variables in shell format strings.

  - Perl:

    xgettext now also supports Perl.

  - PHP:

    "xgettext --language=PHP" now supports the plural handling functions
    ngettext, dngettext, dcngettext (introduced in PHP 4.2.0).

  - ObjectiveC:

    "xgettext --language=ObjectiveC" now supports the @"..." string syntax,
    the NSLocalizedString function and the ObjectiveC specific format strings.

    All the tools that manipulate PO files can work with .strings files
    as well, if given the --stringtable-input and/or --stringtable-output
    option. To create a .strings file from a PO or POT file, use
    "msgcat --stringtable-output". To create a PO or POT file from a
    .strings file, use "xgettext".

  - GCC-source:

    xgettext's --language option now supports the value "GCC-source". This
    is like --language=C, except that in this mode, xgettext recognizes the
    special kind of format strings used in the GCC sources and marks them
    as 'gcc-internal-format'.

  - C++ with Qt:

    xgettext has a new option --qt that triggers the recognition and marking
    of Qt format strings.

    msgfmt has a new option --qt that generates binary message catalogs in
    Qt's .qm format.

* Data formats support:

  - Glade:
    xgettext now also supports Glade version 2.

* xgettext has a more reliable detection of format strings.  It now
  recognizes format strings depending on their position, for example as the
  second argument of fprintf(), regardless whether the literal string contains
  format directives.  This behaviour can be customized through the --flag
  option.

* libgettextpo library:

  - New functions for testing the obsolete/fuzzy/*-format flags of a message.
  - New convenience functions for extracting and analyzing the header entry.

* Portability:

  - C format strings with positions, as they arise when a translator needs to
    reorder a sentence, are now supported on all platforms. On those few
    platforms (NetBSD and Woe32) for which the native printf()/fprintf()/...
    functions don't support such format strings, replacements are provided
    through <libintl.h>.

  - A new configuration option --disable-libasprintf allows to build all of
    gettext except libasprintf; this is necessary on platforms for which
    libtool cannot create shared libraries with C++ code.

* Documentation:

  - Complete examples illustrating the use of gettext, including program
    sources, Makefile and autoconf infrastructure, have been added. They
    cover the following programming languages:
      C           (text mode, GNOME)
      C++         (text mode, Qt, KDE, GNOME)
      ObjectiveC  (text mode, GNUstep, GNOME)
      Shell       (text mode)
      Python      (text mode)
      Lisp        (text mode)
      librep      (text mode)
      Smalltalk   (text mode)
      Java        (text mode, AWT, Swing)
      awk         (text mode)
      Pascal      (text mode)
      YCP         (libyui)
      Tcl         (text mode, Tk)
      Perl        (text mode)
      PHP         (text mode)

Version 0.12.1 - May 2003

* Bug fixes.

Version 0.12 - May 2003

* The gettext package is now separated into two subpackages:
  - gettext-runtime: Runtime libraries and programs.
  - gettext-tools: Tools and documentation for developers and translators.
  The 'gettext-runtime' package is very small and should be installed on every
  system that has users who desire to use internationalization. Whereas the
  'gettext-tools' package is only for developers and translators.

* The po/Makevars file has a new field MSGID_BUGS_ADDRESS, which program
  maintainers should fill in, to help feedback from the translators to the
  program maintainers.
  xgettext, accordingly, has a new option --msgid-bugs-address.

* Programming languages support:

  - C++

    A new C++ class, called gnu::autosprintf, makes it possible to use
    C format strings in C++. This is needed for proper internationalization
    of C++ programs.

  - Java

    All the tools that manipulate PO files can work with .properties files
    as well, if given the --properties-input and/or --properties-output
    option. To create a .properties file from a PO or POT file, use
    "msgcat --properties-output".

  - Smalltalk

    xgettext now also supports Smalltalk.

  - PHP

    xgettext now also supports PHP.

  - Python

    "xgettext --language=Python" now supports the plural handling functions
    ngettext, dngettext, ungettext (introduced in Python 2.3).

  - A new autoconf macro AM_PO_SUBDIRS is added. It is like AM_GNU_GETTEXT,
    for packages written in other languages than C/C++.

* A new library libgettextpo, with public header file "gettext-po.h",
  provides functions for reading PO files into memory. It is useful for
  applying PO files to areas not covered by the GNU gettext programs.
  New documentation section:
  - Writing your own programs that process PO files.

* New documentation sections:
  - Prioritizing messages: How to determine which messages to translate first.
  - Names: Marking Proper Names for Translation.

* xgettext now supports msgid strings in other encodings than ASCII.
  xgettext has a new option --from-code that specifies the encoding of the
  source files. The resulting POT files are UTF-8 encoded.

* Tools for translators:

  - msgmerge has a new option -N/--no-fuzzy-matching that inhibits the fuzzy
    search for untranslated messages.

  - msgattrib has new options --only-file and --ignore-file that cause the
    specified attribute manipulation to apply to selected messages only.

* Compatibility with automake-1.7.

* In documentation section po/LINGUAS:
  - Document the optional "languages" en@quot and en@boldquot.

* New configuration option --enable-relocatable.  See the INSTALL file for
  details.

Version 0.11.5 - August 2002

* Bug fixes in the gettext.m4 autoconf macros.

Version 0.11.4 - July 2002

* The tools now know about the ISO C 99 <inttypes.h> format string directive
  macros PRId64, PRIxMAX etc.

Version 0.11.3 - July 2002

* New program:
    autopoint - copies standard gettext infrastructure

* The documentation makes it clear that 'gettextize' is a wizard and
  migration tool.

* gettextize has a new option --dry-run.

* Improved portability to Solaris, OSF/1 and Linux/libc5.

* Improved interoperability with GCC 3.1.

* New documentation sections:
  - CVS Issues
  - mkinstalldirs
  - config.h.in

Version 0.11.2 - April 2002

* Bug fixes in the gettext.m4 autoconf macros.

* New documentation section:
  - Preparing Translatable Strings

Version 0.11.1 - March 2002

* xgettext now also supports Python, Tcl, Awk and Glade.

* msgfmt can create (and msgunfmt can dump) Tcl message catalogs.

* msggrep has a new option -C that allows to search for strings in translator
  comments.

* Bug fixes in the gettext.m4 autoconf macros.

Version 0.11 - January 2002

* New programs:
    msgattrib - attribute matching and manipulation on message catalog,
    msgcat - combines several message catalogs,
    msgconv - character set conversion for message catalog,
    msgen - create English message catalog,
    msgexec - process translations of message catalog,
    msgfilter - edit translations of message catalog,
    msggrep - pattern matching on message catalog,
    msginit - initialize a message catalog,
    msguniq - unify duplicate translations in message catalog.

* msgfmt can create (and msgunfmt can dump) Java ResourceBundles.

* xgettext now also supports Lisp, Emacs Lisp, librep, Java, ObjectPascal,
  YCP.

* The tools now know about format strings in languages other than C.
  They recognize new message flags named lisp-format, elisp-format,
  librep-format, smalltalk-format, java-format, python-format, ycp-format.
  When such a flag is present, the msgfmt program verifies the consistency
  of the translated and the untranslated format string.

* The msgfmt command line options have changed.  Option -c now also checks
  the header entry, a check which was previously activated through -v.
  Option -C corresponds to the compatibility checks previously activated
  through -v -v.  Option -v now only increases verbosity and doesn't
  influence whether msgfmt succeeds or fails.  A new option
  --check-accelerators is useful for GUI menu item translations.

* msgcomm now writes its results to standard output by default. The options
  -d/--default-domain and -p/--output-dir have been removed.

* Manual pages for all the programs have been added.

* PO mode changes:
  - New key bindings for 'po-previous-fuzzy-entry',
    'po-previous-obsolete-entry', 'po-previous-translated-entry',
    'po-previous-untranslated', 'po-undo', 'po-other-window', and
    'po-select-auxiliary'.
  - Support for merging two message catalogs, based on msgcat and ediff.

* A fuzzy attribute of the header entry of a message catalog is now ignored
  by the tools, i.e. it is used even if marked fuzzy.

* gettextize has a new option --intl which determines whether a copy of the
  intl directory is included in the package.

* The Makefile variable @INTLLIBS@ is deprecated. It is replaced with
  @LIBINTL@ (in projects without libtool) or @LTLIBINTL@ (in projects with
  libtool).

* New packaging hints for binary package distributors. See file PACKAGING.

* New documentation sections:
  - Manipulating
  - po/LINGUAS
  - po/Makevars
  - lib/gettext.h
  - autoconf macros
  - Other Programming Languages

Version 0.10.40 - September 2001

* The libintl library is now covered by the GNU LGPL.  The tools are still
  covered by the GNU GPL.

Version 0.10.39 - July 2001

* This is a bug-fix release.

* Now uses libtool-1.4.  Linking with the libintl shared library is easier.

* The autoconf macros now work with both autoconf-2.13 and autoconf-2.50.

Version 0.10.38 - May 2001

* This is a bug-fix release.

* Manual pages for the GNU libintl library functions have been added.

Version 0.10.37 - April 2001

This is a bug-fix release.

Version 0.10.36 - March 2001, by Ulrich Drepper and Bruno Haible

* General plural handling. New functions ngettext, dngettext, dcngettext.

* Locales which differ only in the character encoding, for example ja_JP and
  ja_JP.UTF-8, can now share the same message catalogs. gettext converts
  the messages to the appropriate character encoding on the fly.

* The tools now correctly process PO files in CJK encodings.

* Support for non-GNU gettext has been dropped.  Previously, on Solaris, the
  system's gettext was used (unless --with-included-gettext was specified),
  which led to problems with PO files that were not 100% translated.

* Support for the catgets wrapper has been dropped.  This means that gettext
  now always supports the LANGUAGE environment variable, message inheritance,
  automatic charset conversion etc.

* Support for the old Linux specific .msg catalog format has been dropped.

* When the included GNU libintl is installed (i.e. on GNU platforms, when
  the configure option --with-included-gettext is given, or on non-GNU
  platforms, when the configure option --disable-nls is not given), it is
  also installed as a shared library, unless the configure option
  --disable-shared is given.

* PO mode changes:

** PO mode does not use recursive edit anymore, many edits may be worked on
   simultaneously in a single PO file.

** PO mode may handle many translation files at once while correlating related
   entries, for helping multilingual or cultured translators.

** On recent Emacses, PO mode automatically use proper fonts when available.

** PO mode supports marking of C++ sources.

** highlights original message while editing the translation

** PO mode has commands to mail messages to teams or to the translation
   coordinator, with automatic inclusion of the current PO file.

Version 0.10.35 - April 1998, by Ulrich Drepper

* by default the emulation of gettext using the catgets() functions of
  the C library is not selected anymore.  GNU gettext has so many nice
  extensions that this became unreasonable.  Using --with-catgets the
  emulation still can be requested.

* extend xgettext program to handle other file formats other than C/C++.
  For now it also handles PO file.  Using this feature one can concatenate
  arbitrary PO files.

* Tcl module with gettext interface

* Korean translation by Bang Jun Young

* xgettext writes to stdout when default domain name is set to -

* codeset name normalization

* msgmerge program now has all features tupdate has (and more).
  tupdate itself will be removed soon

* po/Makefile.in.in now uses msgmerge instead of tupdate

* escape notation in .po files are only used when explicitly selected

* changed interface of msgunfmt to conform to GNU coding standard

* msgmerge now knows how to handle obsolete entries.  If a formerly obsolete
  entry is used again msgmerge will find it

* better implementation of comment extraction in xgettext.

* better C format string implementation.  The xgettext will classify
  strings as being a format string, or not, in the .po file.  The
  programmer can override the decision explicitly for each string
  by specifying 'xgettext:c-format' and 'xgettext:no-c-format'
  respectively in a C comment preceding the string.

* msgmerge program now always produces output.  Fuzzy or non-existing
  translations are no reason for holding back the result.

* reasonable header entry format implemented

* Norwegian translation by Karl Anders �gard

* Configure command line option '--with-gnu-gettext' is renamed to
  '--with-included-gettext'

* gettextize now can determine whether the aclocal.m4 of the project
  is sufficient

* use automake for Makefile.in generation

* by default now only c-format is emitted in xgettext.  If using the new
  --debug option one can enable printing possible-c-format to see who
  decided about the string: xgettext or the programmer

* the installed libintl.h file no longer depends on HAVE_LOCALE_H being
  defined.  After running configure we know whether this file exists.

* wrapping of lines in PO file output finally enabled.
  A new special comment no-wrap prevents wrapping.

* add --statistics option to msgfmt to get information about number of
  translated, untranslated, and fuzzy messages

* change behaviour of --verbose option to msgfmt.  This no longer
  causes the check on the messages to be performed.  The check for leading
  and trailing \n is always performed and the check of the format specifiers
  is performed when --check is given.

* shared library support based On Gord Matzigkeit's libtool package

* msgcomm program by Peter Miller to extract messages shared by input
  files

* many more translations.

Version 0.10 - December 1995, by Ulrich Drepper

* implement --shell-script option for gettext program

* implement object-oriented, lazy message handling :-)
  Consult the manual for more/any information

* implement locale name aliasing, similar to the one used
  in the X Window System

* support for GNU gettext sources in central place to support
  use in development environments of other projects

* implement CEN syntax for environment variable values

* msgcmp program to find matches in two .po files

* programs now have exit status != 0 if errors occurred

* libintl.a is now selfcontained and can be used without context in
  other projects (even on systems missing alloca)

* gettextize now automatically runs config.status

* swedish message catalog

* new options for xgettext: -D/--directory to change in specified directory
  before processing the input files and -f/--files-from to specify file from
  which the names of the input files are read.
  The later option in necessary for large projects such as GNU C Library.

* new programs msgmerge and msgunfmt by Peter Miller.  The code of the other
  programs is now also much cleaner.

Version 0.9 - August 1995, by Ulrich Drepper

* again many improvements on the manual

* norwegian message catalog

* compilation now works with --disable-nls

* better checks

Version 0.8 - July 1995, by Ulrich Drepper

* much improved manual (although still far from being complete)

* improved PO mode; it now can prepare C sources for use with gettext
  by marking translatable strings

* better support for sparse System V systems

* check goal (kind of)

* more input tests and warnings

* better support for integration in other packages

* many bugs fixed

Version 0.7 - June 1995, by Ulrich Drepper

* New GNU package providing functionality to internationalize and
localize other programs.

* Implementation of the Uniforum(*) proposal for internationalization
on top of X/Open(*) style catgets functions.

* Complete implementation of the Uniforum functions for system
lacking either of them or those who which to have a different
implementation with many advantages.

* Implementation of the three tools for message catalog handling
described in the Uniforum.

* Emacs po-mode for handling portable message object files which are
the basis of the work of the package.


(*) Some history:  The POSIX working groups have so far been unable to
agree on one set of message catalog handling functions for the C Library.
For now there are competing proposals, one by the Uniforum group, led by
Sun, and the other by X/Open.  Although the latter is surely implemented
on more systems, it is not perceived as the clear leader.