Purpose

One of the requirements for internationalization of programs is that messages be displayed in the language of the user. This requirement is satisfied by producing versions of the messages which are translated into all supported languages.

The OS2 C library messaging support is based on the messaging support described in the X/Open XPG4 specification. It consists of functions for extracting messages from message catalog files (catopen, catgets, catclose) and utilities for producing message catalog files (gencat, mkcatdef). The functions are documented in the C Library Reference and the utilities are documented in this book.

The GENCAT utility processes a message source file and produces a catalog file usable by the C library messaging functions.

Description

GENCAT creates the message catalog (usually *.cat) from a message source file (usually *.msg) or standard input. You can specify any number of message source files. A message source file is a text file that contains messages consisting of a message number followed by the message text. See the Preprocess Message Source File Utility (MKCATDEF) for using symbolic message identifiers in your message source file.

For more information on GENCAT, see Generate Message Catalog Utility (GENCAT).