(No, we don't want to have wide characters in MO files. They would make the file unnecessarily large, and the wchar_t type being platform dependent, MO files would be platform dependent as well.)
This particular issue has been strongly debated in the GNU gettext development forum, and it is expectable that MO file format will evolve or change over time. It is even possible that many formats may later be supported concurrently. But surely, we have to start somewhere, and the MO file format described here is a good start. Nothing is cast in concrete, and the format may later evolve fairly easily, so we should feel comfortable with the current approach.
In other words, in the current incarnation of the gettext program, you can't translate anything that requires wide characters. Well done, guys. You losers. And thanks for the little bit of philosophy about file formats in the MANUAL.
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