Re: xgettext and the comments at the top of the .pot file

[Phil Edwards]

On Mon, May 12, 2003 at 07:17:28PM +0200, Bruno Haible wrote:
> Phil Edwards wrote:
> 
> > When using a command such as
> >
> >    xgettext --default-domain=foo --join-existing -o .../foo.pot  ...
> >
> > is there any way to tell xgettext to /not/ regenerate the comments at the
> > top of the foo.pot file?
> 
> Yes. It's the --omit-header option.

That has the effect of removing it entirely; not what we want.  The existing
comment block is fine, but xgettext seems to either change it or remove it
depending on options.  There's no "leave it alone" behavior that I can find.


> > package maintainers would get sick of rewriting this text each time a new
> > string literal is extracted.
> 
> The header of the POT file is meant as a template that is filled out
> by the translator, either by running "msginit" or manually. See the
> gettext manual, section "Creating a New PO File". The package
> maintainers don't need to fiddle with it.

Except that xgettext keeps thowing out the information that translators
aren't supposed to touch, like the pieces that go in place of "SOME
DESCRIPTIVE TITLE", "FIRST AUTHOR", "Project-Id-Version:", and so on.


Phil

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