Re: LANG and @documentlanguage

[Bruno Haible]

Karl Berry wrote:
> For Texinfo, once again my suggestion is that we setlocale to the
> @documentlanguage when we see it, and only switch back to the $LANG
> locale when we have to print a diagnostic message.

Doesn't this bring in a maintainability problem? This way, you have to
modify each code that uses gettext(), regex(), <ctype.h>, etc. It goes as
far as xmalloc(), which - in the gnulib version - calls gettext() for
its error message.

> Obviously performance is not an issue in that case

Then I would just bite the bullet and use a single function that switches
setlocale() away and back.

The gettext API might be enhanced in the future with a function that takes
the locale as argument; this is needed for multithreaded environments where
performance counts, like web servers built on PHP. This API is not yet there;
so I don't recommend to wait for it. But when it comes, you would regret
having made complicated modifications all over the place that wouldn't be
needed any more.

Bruno