-sparcabi is used on SPARC platforms conforming to the SPARC Compliance Definition, i.e. SVR4/Solaris.
-intelabi is used on Intel platforms conforming to the System V Application Binary Interface, i.e. SVR4.
-earlyR6abi may be used in addition to -intelabi for situations where the vendor wishes to maintain binary compatibility between X11R6 public-patch 11 (and earlier) and X11R6 public-patch 12 (and later).
-functionabi generates a functional abi to the string table. This mechanism imposes a severe performance penalty and it's recommended that you not use it.
-arrayperabi results in a separate array for each string. This is the default behavior if makestrs was compiled with -DARRAYPERSTR (it almost never is).
-defaultabi forces the generation of the "normal" string table even if makestrs was compiled with -DARRAYPERSTR. Since makestrs is almost never compiled with -DARRAYPERSTR this is the default behavior if no abioptions are specified.
-i includedir forces the reading of templates from the includedir instead of the local directory. This is useful to have separate source and build directories.
In words you may have one or more #file directives. Each #file may have one or more #table directives.
The #prefix directive determines the string that makestr will prefix to each definition.
The #feature directive determines the string that makestr will use for the feature-test macro, e.g. X[TM]STRINGDEFINES.
The #externref directive determines the string that makestr will use for the extern clause, typically this will be "extern" but Motif wants it to be "externalref"
The #externdef directive determines the string that makestr will use for the declaration, typically this will be the null string (note that makestrs requires a trailing space in this case, i.e. "#externdef "), and Motif will use "externaldef(_xmstrings).
The #ctmpl directive determines the name of the file used as a template for the C source file that is generated
Each #file <filename> directive will result in a corresponding header file by that name containing the appropriate definitions as specified by command line options. A single C source file containing the declarations for the definitions in all the headers will be printed to stdout.
The #htmpl directive determines the name of the file used as a template for the C header file that is generated.
Each #table <tablename> directive will be processed in accordance with the ABI. On most platforms all tables will be catenated into a single table with the name of the first table for that file. To conform to the Intel ABI separate tables will be generated with the names indicated.
The template files specified by the #ctmpl and #htmpl directives are processed by copying line for line from the template file to the appropriate output file. The line containing the string <<<STRING_TABLE_GOES_HERE>>> is not copied to the output file. The appropriate data is then copied to the output file and then the remainder of the template file is copied to the output file.
System V Application Binary Interface, Third Edition, ISBN 0-13-100439-5 UNIX Press, PTR Prentice Hall, 113 Sylvan Avenue, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632
System V Application Binary Interface, Third Edition, Intel386 Architecture Processor Supplement ISBN 0-13-104670-5 UNIX Press, PTR Prentice Hall, 113 Sylvan Avenue, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632
System V Application Binary Interface, Third Edition, SPARC Architecture Processor Supplement ISBN 0-13-104696-9 UNIX Press, PTR Prentice Hall, 113 Sylvan Avenue, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632