gettext_6.html revision 1.1.1.1
1<HTML> 2<HEAD> 3<!-- This HTML file has been created by texi2html 1.52b 4 from gettext.texi on 27 November 2006 --> 5 6<META HTTP-EQUIV="content-type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> 7<TITLE>GNU gettext utilities - 6 Creating a New PO File</TITLE> 8</HEAD> 9<BODY> 10Go to the <A HREF="gettext_1.html">first</A>, <A HREF="gettext_5.html">previous</A>, <A HREF="gettext_7.html">next</A>, <A HREF="gettext_25.html">last</A> section, <A HREF="gettext_toc.html">table of contents</A>. 11<P><HR><P> 12 13 14<H1><A NAME="SEC31" HREF="gettext_toc.html#TOC31">6 Creating a New PO File</A></H1> 15<P> 16<A NAME="IDX216"></A> 17 18</P> 19<P> 20When starting a new translation, the translator creates a file called 21<TT>‘<VAR>LANG</VAR>.po’</TT>, as a copy of the <TT>‘<VAR>package</VAR>.pot’</TT> template 22file with modifications in the initial comments (at the beginning of the file) 23and in the header entry (the first entry, near the beginning of the file). 24 25</P> 26<P> 27The easiest way to do so is by use of the <SAMP>‘msginit’</SAMP> program. 28For example: 29 30</P> 31 32<PRE> 33$ cd <VAR>PACKAGE</VAR>-<VAR>VERSION</VAR> 34$ cd po 35$ msginit 36</PRE> 37 38<P> 39The alternative way is to do the copy and modifications by hand. 40To do so, the translator copies <TT>‘<VAR>package</VAR>.pot’</TT> to 41<TT>‘<VAR>LANG</VAR>.po’</TT>. Then she modifies the initial comments and 42the header entry of this file. 43 44</P> 45 46 47 48<H2><A NAME="SEC32" HREF="gettext_toc.html#TOC32">6.1 Invoking the <CODE>msginit</CODE> Program</A></H2> 49 50<P> 51<A NAME="IDX217"></A> 52<A NAME="IDX218"></A> 53 54<PRE> 55msginit [<VAR>option</VAR>] 56</PRE> 57 58<P> 59<A NAME="IDX219"></A> 60<A NAME="IDX220"></A> 61The <CODE>msginit</CODE> program creates a new PO file, initializing the meta 62information with values from the user's environment. 63 64</P> 65 66 67<H3><A NAME="SEC33" HREF="gettext_toc.html#TOC33">6.1.1 Input file location</A></H3> 68 69<DL COMPACT> 70 71<DT><SAMP>‘-i <VAR>inputfile</VAR>’</SAMP> 72<DD> 73<DT><SAMP>‘--input=<VAR>inputfile</VAR>’</SAMP> 74<DD> 75<A NAME="IDX221"></A> 76<A NAME="IDX222"></A> 77Input POT file. 78 79</DL> 80 81<P> 82If no <VAR>inputfile</VAR> is given, the current directory is searched for the 83POT file. If it is <SAMP>‘-’</SAMP>, standard input is read. 84 85</P> 86 87 88<H3><A NAME="SEC34" HREF="gettext_toc.html#TOC34">6.1.2 Output file location</A></H3> 89 90<DL COMPACT> 91 92<DT><SAMP>‘-o <VAR>file</VAR>’</SAMP> 93<DD> 94<DT><SAMP>‘--output-file=<VAR>file</VAR>’</SAMP> 95<DD> 96<A NAME="IDX223"></A> 97<A NAME="IDX224"></A> 98Write output to specified PO file. 99 100</DL> 101 102<P> 103If no output file is given, it depends on the <SAMP>‘--locale’</SAMP> option or the 104user's locale setting. If it is <SAMP>‘-’</SAMP>, the results are written to 105standard output. 106 107</P> 108 109 110<H3><A NAME="SEC35" HREF="gettext_toc.html#TOC35">6.1.3 Input file syntax</A></H3> 111 112<DL COMPACT> 113 114<DT><SAMP>‘-P’</SAMP> 115<DD> 116<DT><SAMP>‘--properties-input’</SAMP> 117<DD> 118<A NAME="IDX225"></A> 119<A NAME="IDX226"></A> 120Assume the input file is a Java ResourceBundle in Java <CODE>.properties</CODE> 121syntax, not in PO file syntax. 122 123<DT><SAMP>‘--stringtable-input’</SAMP> 124<DD> 125<A NAME="IDX227"></A> 126Assume the input file is a NeXTstep/GNUstep localized resource file in 127<CODE>.strings</CODE> syntax, not in PO file syntax. 128 129</DL> 130 131 132 133<H3><A NAME="SEC36" HREF="gettext_toc.html#TOC36">6.1.4 Output details</A></H3> 134 135<DL COMPACT> 136 137<DT><SAMP>‘-l <VAR>ll_CC</VAR>’</SAMP> 138<DD> 139<DT><SAMP>‘--locale=<VAR>ll_CC</VAR>’</SAMP> 140<DD> 141<A NAME="IDX228"></A> 142<A NAME="IDX229"></A> 143Set target locale. <VAR>ll</VAR> should be a language code, and <VAR>CC</VAR> should 144be a country code. The command <SAMP>‘locale -a’</SAMP> can be used to output a list 145of all installed locales. The default is the user's locale setting. 146 147<DT><SAMP>‘--no-translator’</SAMP> 148<DD> 149<A NAME="IDX230"></A> 150Declares that the PO file will not have a human translator and is instead 151automatically generated. 152 153<DT><SAMP>‘-p’</SAMP> 154<DD> 155<DT><SAMP>‘--properties-output’</SAMP> 156<DD> 157<A NAME="IDX231"></A> 158<A NAME="IDX232"></A> 159Write out a Java ResourceBundle in Java <CODE>.properties</CODE> syntax. Note 160that this file format doesn't support plural forms and silently drops 161obsolete messages. 162 163<DT><SAMP>‘--stringtable-output’</SAMP> 164<DD> 165<A NAME="IDX233"></A> 166Write out a NeXTstep/GNUstep localized resource file in <CODE>.strings</CODE> syntax. 167Note that this file format doesn't support plural forms. 168 169<DT><SAMP>‘-w <VAR>number</VAR>’</SAMP> 170<DD> 171<DT><SAMP>‘--width=<VAR>number</VAR>’</SAMP> 172<DD> 173<A NAME="IDX234"></A> 174<A NAME="IDX235"></A> 175Set the output page width. Long strings in the output files will be 176split across multiple lines in order to ensure that each line's width 177(= number of screen columns) is less or equal to the given <VAR>number</VAR>. 178 179<DT><SAMP>‘--no-wrap’</SAMP> 180<DD> 181<A NAME="IDX236"></A> 182Do not break long message lines. Message lines whose width exceeds the 183output page width will not be split into several lines. Only file reference 184lines which are wider than the output page width will be split. 185 186</DL> 187 188 189 190<H3><A NAME="SEC37" HREF="gettext_toc.html#TOC37">6.1.5 Informative output</A></H3> 191 192<DL COMPACT> 193 194<DT><SAMP>‘-h’</SAMP> 195<DD> 196<DT><SAMP>‘--help’</SAMP> 197<DD> 198<A NAME="IDX237"></A> 199<A NAME="IDX238"></A> 200Display this help and exit. 201 202<DT><SAMP>‘-V’</SAMP> 203<DD> 204<DT><SAMP>‘--version’</SAMP> 205<DD> 206<A NAME="IDX239"></A> 207<A NAME="IDX240"></A> 208Output version information and exit. 209 210</DL> 211 212 213 214<H2><A NAME="SEC38" HREF="gettext_toc.html#TOC38">6.2 Filling in the Header Entry</A></H2> 215<P> 216<A NAME="IDX241"></A> 217 218</P> 219<P> 220The initial comments "SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE", "YEAR" and 221"FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR" ought to be replaced by sensible 222information. This can be done in any text editor; if Emacs is used 223and it switched to PO mode automatically (because it has recognized 224the file's suffix), you can disable it by typing <KBD>M-x fundamental-mode</KBD>. 225 226</P> 227<P> 228Modifying the header entry can already be done using PO mode: in Emacs, 229type <KBD>M-x po-mode RET</KBD> and then <KBD>RET</KBD> again to start editing the 230entry. You should fill in the following fields. 231 232</P> 233<DL COMPACT> 234 235<DT>Project-Id-Version 236<DD> 237This is the name and version of the package. 238 239<DT>Report-Msgid-Bugs-To 240<DD> 241This has already been filled in by <CODE>xgettext</CODE>. It contains an email 242address or URL where you can report bugs in the untranslated strings: 243 244 245<UL> 246<LI>Strings which are not entire sentences, see the maintainer guidelines 247 248in section <A HREF="gettext_4.html#SEC14">4.3 Preparing Translatable Strings</A>. 249<LI>Strings which use unclear terms or require additional context to be 250 251understood. 252<LI>Strings which make invalid assumptions about notation of date, time or 253 254money. 255<LI>Pluralisation problems. 256 257<LI>Incorrect English spelling. 258 259<LI>Incorrect formatting. 260 261</UL> 262 263<DT>POT-Creation-Date 264<DD> 265This has already been filled in by <CODE>xgettext</CODE>. 266 267<DT>PO-Revision-Date 268<DD> 269You don't need to fill this in. It will be filled by the PO file editor 270when you save the file. 271 272<DT>Last-Translator 273<DD> 274Fill in your name and email address (without double quotes). 275 276<DT>Language-Team 277<DD> 278Fill in the English name of the language, and the email address or 279homepage URL of the language team you are part of. 280 281Before starting a translation, it is a good idea to get in touch with 282your translation team, not only to make sure you don't do duplicated work, 283but also to coordinate difficult linguistic issues. 284 285<A NAME="IDX242"></A> 286In the Free Translation Project, each translation team has its own mailing 287list. The up-to-date list of teams can be found at the Free Translation 288Project's homepage, <A HREF="http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/HTML/">http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/contrib/po/HTML/</A>, 289in the "National teams" area. 290 291<DT>Content-Type 292<DD> 293<A NAME="IDX243"></A> 294<A NAME="IDX244"></A> 295Replace <SAMP>‘CHARSET’</SAMP> with the character encoding used for your language, 296in your locale, or UTF-8. This field is needed for correct operation of the 297<CODE>msgmerge</CODE> and <CODE>msgfmt</CODE> programs, as well as for users whose 298locale's character encoding differs from yours (see section <A HREF="gettext_11.html#SEC172">11.2.4 How to specify the output character set <CODE>gettext</CODE> uses</A>). 299 300<A NAME="IDX245"></A> 301You get the character encoding of your locale by running the shell command 302<SAMP>‘locale charmap’</SAMP>. If the result is <SAMP>‘C’</SAMP> or <SAMP>‘ANSI_X3.4-1968’</SAMP>, 303which is equivalent to <SAMP>‘ASCII’</SAMP> (= <SAMP>‘US-ASCII’</SAMP>), it means that your 304locale is not correctly configured. In this case, ask your translation 305team which charset to use. <SAMP>‘ASCII’</SAMP> is not usable for any language 306except Latin. 307 308<A NAME="IDX246"></A> 309Because the PO files must be portable to operating systems with less advanced 310internationalization facilities, the character encodings that can be used 311are limited to those supported by both GNU <CODE>libc</CODE> and GNU 312<CODE>libiconv</CODE>. These are: 313<CODE>ASCII</CODE>, <CODE>ISO-8859-1</CODE>, <CODE>ISO-8859-2</CODE>, <CODE>ISO-8859-3</CODE>, 314<CODE>ISO-8859-4</CODE>, <CODE>ISO-8859-5</CODE>, <CODE>ISO-8859-6</CODE>, <CODE>ISO-8859-7</CODE>, 315<CODE>ISO-8859-8</CODE>, <CODE>ISO-8859-9</CODE>, <CODE>ISO-8859-13</CODE>, <CODE>ISO-8859-14</CODE>, 316<CODE>ISO-8859-15</CODE>, 317<CODE>KOI8-R</CODE>, <CODE>KOI8-U</CODE>, <CODE>KOI8-T</CODE>, 318<CODE>CP850</CODE>, <CODE>CP866</CODE>, <CODE>CP874</CODE>, 319<CODE>CP932</CODE>, <CODE>CP949</CODE>, <CODE>CP950</CODE>, <CODE>CP1250</CODE>, <CODE>CP1251</CODE>, 320<CODE>CP1252</CODE>, <CODE>CP1253</CODE>, <CODE>CP1254</CODE>, <CODE>CP1255</CODE>, <CODE>CP1256</CODE>, 321<CODE>CP1257</CODE>, <CODE>GB2312</CODE>, <CODE>EUC-JP</CODE>, <CODE>EUC-KR</CODE>, <CODE>EUC-TW</CODE>, 322<CODE>BIG5</CODE>, <CODE>BIG5-HKSCS</CODE>, <CODE>GBK</CODE>, <CODE>GB18030</CODE>, <CODE>SHIFT_JIS</CODE>, 323<CODE>JOHAB</CODE>, <CODE>TIS-620</CODE>, <CODE>VISCII</CODE>, <CODE>GEORGIAN-PS</CODE>, <CODE>UTF-8</CODE>. 324 325<A NAME="IDX247"></A> 326In the GNU system, the following encodings are frequently used for the 327corresponding languages. 328 329<A NAME="IDX248"></A> 330 331<UL> 332<LI><CODE>ISO-8859-1</CODE> for 333 334Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Cornish, Danish, Dutch, 335English, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Galician, German, 336Greenlandic, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Malay, Manx, 337Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Uzbek, 338Walloon, 339<LI><CODE>ISO-8859-2</CODE> for 340 341Bosnian, Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, 342Slovenian, 343<LI><CODE>ISO-8859-3</CODE> for Maltese, 344 345<LI><CODE>ISO-8859-5</CODE> for Macedonian, Serbian, 346 347<LI><CODE>ISO-8859-6</CODE> for Arabic, 348 349<LI><CODE>ISO-8859-7</CODE> for Greek, 350 351<LI><CODE>ISO-8859-8</CODE> for Hebrew, 352 353<LI><CODE>ISO-8859-9</CODE> for Turkish, 354 355<LI><CODE>ISO-8859-13</CODE> for Latvian, Lithuanian, Maori, 356 357<LI><CODE>ISO-8859-14</CODE> for Welsh, 358 359<LI><CODE>ISO-8859-15</CODE> for 360 361Basque, Catalan, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Irish, 362Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Walloon, 363<LI><CODE>KOI8-R</CODE> for Russian, 364 365<LI><CODE>KOI8-U</CODE> for Ukrainian, 366 367<LI><CODE>KOI8-T</CODE> for Tajik, 368 369<LI><CODE>CP1251</CODE> for Bulgarian, Byelorussian, 370 371<LI><CODE>GB2312</CODE>, <CODE>GBK</CODE>, <CODE>GB18030</CODE> 372 373for simplified writing of Chinese, 374<LI><CODE>BIG5</CODE>, <CODE>BIG5-HKSCS</CODE> 375 376for traditional writing of Chinese, 377<LI><CODE>EUC-JP</CODE> for Japanese, 378 379<LI><CODE>EUC-KR</CODE> for Korean, 380 381<LI><CODE>TIS-620</CODE> for Thai, 382 383<LI><CODE>GEORGIAN-PS</CODE> for Georgian, 384 385<LI><CODE>UTF-8</CODE> for any language, including those listed above. 386 387</UL> 388 389<A NAME="IDX249"></A> 390<A NAME="IDX250"></A> 391When single quote characters or double quote characters are used in 392translations for your language, and your locale's encoding is one of the 393ISO-8859-* charsets, it is best if you create your PO files in UTF-8 394encoding, instead of your locale's encoding. This is because in UTF-8 395the real quote characters can be represented (single quote characters: 396U+2018, U+2019, double quote characters: U+201C, U+201D), whereas none of 397ISO-8859-* charsets has them all. Users in UTF-8 locales will see the 398real quote characters, whereas users in ISO-8859-* locales will see the 399vertical apostrophe and the vertical double quote instead (because that's 400what the character set conversion will transliterate them to). 401 402<A NAME="IDX251"></A> 403To enter such quote characters under X11, you can change your keyboard 404mapping using the <CODE>xmodmap</CODE> program. The X11 names of the quote 405characters are "leftsinglequotemark", "rightsinglequotemark", 406"leftdoublequotemark", "rightdoublequotemark", "singlelowquotemark", 407"doublelowquotemark". 408 409Note that only recent versions of GNU Emacs support the UTF-8 encoding: 410Emacs 20 with Mule-UCS, and Emacs 21. As of January 2001, XEmacs doesn't 411support the UTF-8 encoding. 412 413The character encoding name can be written in either upper or lower case. 414Usually upper case is preferred. 415 416<DT>Content-Transfer-Encoding 417<DD> 418Set this to <CODE>8bit</CODE>. 419 420<DT>Plural-Forms 421<DD> 422This field is optional. It is only needed if the PO file has plural forms. 423You can find them by searching for the <SAMP>‘msgid_plural’</SAMP> keyword. The 424format of the plural forms field is described in section <A HREF="gettext_11.html#SEC174">11.2.6 Additional functions for plural forms</A>. 425</DL> 426 427<P><HR><P> 428Go to the <A HREF="gettext_1.html">first</A>, <A HREF="gettext_5.html">previous</A>, <A HREF="gettext_7.html">next</A>, <A HREF="gettext_25.html">last</A> section, <A HREF="gettext_toc.html">table of contents</A>. 429</BODY> 430</HTML> 431