Re: [libreoffice-l10n] extra comments on top of po files

Hi Sophie, Baurzhan, *,

On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 6:48 PM, Sophie <gautier.sophie@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Baurzhan,
> Le 18/05/2014 03:28, Baurzhan Muftakhidinov a écrit :
> > While preparing to 4.3 translation, I have
> > noticed that PO files downloaded from Pootle
> > contain a comment like this as first line of file
> >
> > #. extracted from cui/uiconfig/ui

This is not an invalid line, more specifically it is a "extracted
comment" in gnu-terminology:
https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/PO-Files.html
"Comment lines starting with #. contain comments given by the
programmer, directed at the translator; these comments are called
extracted comments because the xgettext program extracts them from the
program's source code"

In general, every line that starts with # is a comment. Some comments
have special meaning, like the #, fuzzy marker, and others like #~ are
used by pootle internally (this flags obsolete strings, i.e. strings
that once needed to be translated, but are no longer used in the
current version.

> > These comments are gone if I save the PO file
> > with Poedit, for example. Aren't they against the
> > PO file format?
>
> Poedit don't show the comment but it still should be in the po file if
> you edit it with gedit for example.
> > Is it safe to remove these comments from PO files?

The first line shouldn't matter, but you should avoid throwing away
the other comments, as the other comment lines contain the context for
the string - so when you remove the comments, pootle (or other tools)
cannot tell what string the translation belongs to, esp. when the
english string is the same for both.

> not sure, Cloph will have to confirm if it's only an indication or used
> somewhere.

It isn't safe to remove all comments, and #. and #: style comments are
commonly used, so I would be surprised if poedit would throw them all
away.
That being said the one in the very first line is not critical, so no
need to worry if that gets lost.

But if the comments above the individual translation strings also are
stripped, then you should have a closer look at the program's settings
or use another one.

ciao
Christian

-- 
To unsubscribe e-mail to: l10n+unsubscribe@global.libreoffice.org
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/l10n/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted