Re: Bug#114461: gettext: there is no way to control where message catalogs are found at run time (fwd)

[Bruno Haible]

Zack Weinberg wrote:
> Okay, but then TEXTDOMAINDIR should be honored by all libgettext-using
> programs, not just the gettext command.  Right now, there is *no way*
> to override the compiled-in path in most libgettext-using programs.

This is not true. Assuming you as a user or translator have your private
Italian translations in $HOME/my-translations/it, then you can cause
gettext to use your translations in preferrence of / in addition to the
preinstalled Italian ones by setting the environment variable

  $ export LANGUAGE=../../../../../../$HOME/my-translations/it:it

This works because the elements of the LANGUAGE specifications can be
relative pathnames.

In gettext 0.11.3, and maybe also glibc 2.3, you'll be able to use
absolute pathnames inside LANGUAGE, so that you can write

  $ export LANGUAGE=$HOME/my-translations/it:it

Bruno