R devel - Dec 2007 - gettext() and messages in 'pkg' domain

Hello,

As I understand it, gettext() is designed to retrieve messages from 
'R-pkg' domains. As such, it cannot retrieve some of the messages in the
'pkg' domains (those supposed to be accessed by C code only, I know), 
namely, all messages ending with space(s) or \n. This is clearly 
indicated in ?gettext (at least for trailing spaces):

"For 'gettext', leading and trailing whitespace is ignored when
looking
for the translation."

So, my questions:
1) Do I really need to write C code to retrieve all messages from 'pkg' 
domain?

2) Wouldn't it be useful to add an argument to gettext() (like trim = 
TRUE), or alternatively, to propose a Gettext() function in utils 
packages that allows retrieving those messages with trailing space(s) or 
\n in 'pkg' domain from R code?

Best,

Philippe Grosjean

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007, Philippe Grosjean wrote:
> Hello,
>
> As I understand it, gettext() is designed to retrieve messages from
> 'R-pkg' domains. As such, it cannot retrieve some of the messages
in the
> 'pkg' domains (those supposed to be accessed by C code only, I
know),
> namely, all messages ending with space(s) or \n. This is clearly
> indicated in ?gettext (at least for trailing spaces):
>
> "For 'gettext', leading and trailing whitespace is ignored
when looking
> for the translation."
(\n _is_ whitespace).
> So, my questions:
> 1) Do I really need to write C code to retrieve all messages from
'pkg'
> domain?
Yes.
> 2) Wouldn't it be useful to add an argument to gettext() (like trim
> TRUE), or alternatively, to propose a Gettext() function in utils
> packages that allows retrieving those messages with trailing space(s) or
> \n in 'pkg' domain from R code?
Apparently only useful to you: it's certainly not useful for the 
internationalization of R itself, and I don't see why you can't organize
the package so that the C-level messages don't have leading/trailing 
whitespace *if* you want to mix up domains.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595