gettext (Unix/GNU) and FormatMessage (Windows)

good links:
http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html#Special-cases
http://www.heiner-eichmann.de/autotools/contents.html
http://userguide.icu-project.org/locale/localizing

requirements:
- ARCH Linux: gettext 0.17
- NetBSD 4.0: gettext and libintl seem to be old, but around
- FreeBSD 7.0: gettext and libintl live as packages in /usr/local
  version: 0.16.1
- OpenBSD 4.3: gettext in /usr/local, packages from ports
  version: 0.16.1
- Solaris 10: there is the native one (which is somehow broken
  especially in xgettext) and the runtime environment which is
  ok, we can also install some GNU gettext versions (e.g.
  SunFreeware into /usr/local). This is messy and hard to get
  right with linking!
  setlocale is called from native libraries (is in libc), rest
  can be made run from GNU gettext
  See also  http://cpansearch.perl.org/src/GUIDO/libintl-perl-1.16/README.solaris
- Cygwin, no problem, out of the box

- set of header files defining the constants, gettext or other macros are
  used to mark the strings, now we have to build a tool which acts as a
  C/C++-preprocessor and spits out the message ids and message strings
  - http://www.sigala.it/sandro/download.php