Xlib Message and Resource Facilities

Part of internationalizing a system environment, toolkit-based application is not having any locale-specific data hardcoded within the application source. One common locale-specific item is messages (error and warning) returned by the application of the standard I/O.

In general, for any error or warning messages to be displayed to the user through a system environment toolkit widget or gadget, externalize the messages through message catalogs.

For dialog messages to be displayed through a toolkit component, externalize the messages through localized resource files. This is done in the same way as localizing resources, such as the XmLabel and XmPushButton classes' XmNlabelString resource or window titles.

For example, if a warning message is to be displayed through an XmMessageBox widget class, the XmNmessageString resource cannot be hardcoded within the application source code. Instead, the value of this resource must be retrieved from a message catalog. For an internationalized application expected to run in different locales, a distinct localized catalog must exist for each of the locales to be supported. In this way, the application need not be rebuilt.

Localized resource files can be put in the /usr/lib/X11/%L/appdefaults subdirectories, or they can be pointed to by the XENVIRONMENT environment variable. The %L variable is replaced with the name of the locale used at run time.