[Python-Dev] Small issues in gettext support

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Gustavo Niemeyer wrote:
> You belive that returning a string in some unpredictable
> encoding used by the translator is explicit? 

No. What is explicit here is that we return the bytes in
the .mo file; and conversion of these bytes should be
requested explicitly.

As for compatibility with GNU gettext: Older versions
of GNU gettext did not perform any conversion, either.
I think changing the behaviour of an existing function
was a bad thing to do for GNU gettext, as well, and I
don't think we should repeat that mistake.

It would be good to find out what users of Python
gettext think about a possible change.

Temporarily warning about this change of behaviour
is also unacceptable. Adding another function, e.g.
lgettext (for local charset), along with lngettext,
ldgettext, might be another solution.

Regards,
Martin