Re: Bug#147624: gettext: xgettext seems vaguely unaware of pot extension (fwd)

[Bruno Haible]

Mark W. Eichin writes:

> While xgettext will recognize a .pot file on input as parsable like a
> PO file, there is no other support for that extension, and no mention
> of it in the xgettext manpage.  Yet the info file makes it clear that
> the totally-untranslated base file that xgettext [creates] is a "PO Template"
> file, which should have a .pot extension.  This is inconsistent

It's not clear what you consider inconsistent.

Do you suggest more support for .pot files should be added?

The .pot files are implicitly supported by msgcat, msggrep, msgexec
etc. - these don't need to look at the file extension. The .pot file
extension is also explicitly supported by msginit. Other than that,
there is little functionality that could be applied to .pot files.
Remember, they are just templates.

Do you suggest that some functionality be removed from xgettext?

It won't happen, as some Makefiles depend on these undocumented
features in xgettext. They are undocumented because msgcat is now
preferred over xgettext for concatenating .pot files.

Bruno