Re: gettext and C usage

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Bruno Haible <address@hidden>
> Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 14:38:24 +0100 (CET)
> 
> With useless #ifdefs, the program still compiles, sure. But it takes
> half a second more at configure time to check for <locale.h>, and it
> clutters the developer's sources.

I think 1/2 a second is orders of magnitude more than the actual
slowdown.  As for source clutter, since the developer in this case
already has the ifdef, he evidently doesn't mind so much.

I guess my point is that a decision to deprecate old platforms should
not be taken because of a fraction of a second of CPU time.  A much
more serious reason is needed to cut off potential users.

> OTOH, testing for !HAVE_LC_MESSAGES is wrong also,
> because when ENABLE_NLS is defined (on platforms without LC_MESSAGES
> in <locale.h>), then <libintl.h> will define its own LC_MESSAGES, and
> you'd better use the same one. So this becomes
> 
> #ifndef LC_MESSAGES
> # define LC_MESSAGES (-1)
> #endif

Agreed.  Should this go into gettext.h or into one of the headers in
the package which uses Gettext?