xml2po is a simple Python program which extracts translatable content from free-form XML documents and outputs gettext compatible POT files. Translated PO files can be turned into XML output again.

It can work it's magic with most "simple" tags, and for complicated tags one has to provide a list of all tags which are "final" (that will be put into one "message" in PO file), "ignored" (skipped over) and "space preserving".

OPTIONS

The program follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with two dashes (`-'). A summary of options is included below.

-a, --automatic-tags

Automatically decide if tags are to be considered "final" or not.

-k, --keep-entities

Don't expand entities (default). See also the -e option.

-e, --expand-all-entities

Expand all entities (including SYSTEM ones).

-m, --mode=TYPE

Treat tags as type TYPE (default: docbook).

-o, --output=FILE

Print resulting text (XML while merging translations with "-p" or "-t" options, POT template file while extracting strings, and translated PO file with "-r" option) to the given FILE.

-p, --po-file=FILE

Specify a PO FILE containing translation and output XML document with translations merged in.

-r, --reuse=FILE

Specify a translated XML document in FILE with the same structure to generate translated PO file for XML document given on command line.

-t, --translation=FILE

Specify a MO file containing translation and output XML document with translations merged in.

-u, --update-translation=LANG.po

Update a PO file using msgmerge.

-l, --language=LANG

Explicitly set language of the translation.

-h, --help

Show summary of options.

-v, --version

Show version of program.

EXAMPLES

Creating POT template files

To create a POT template book.pot from an input file book.xml, which consists of chapter1.xml and chapter2.xml (external entities), run:

                                /usr/bin/xml2po -o book.pot book.xml chapter1.xml chapter2.xml
                        

To expand entities use the -e option:

                                /usr/bin/xml2po -e -o book.pot book.xml
                        

Creating translated XML files (merging back PO files)

After translating book.pot into LANG.po, merge the translations back by using -p option for each XML file:

                                /usr/bin/xml2po -p LANG.po -o book.LANG.xml book.xml
                                /usr/bin/xml2po -p LANG.po -o chapter1.LANG.xml chapter1.xml
                                /usr/bin/xml2po -p LANG.po -o chapter2.LANG.xml chapter2.xml
                        

If you used the -e option to expand entities, you should use it again to merge back the translation into an XML file:

                                /usr/bin/xml2po -e -p LANG.po -o book.LANG.xml book.xml
                        

Updating PO files

When base XML file changes, the real advantages of PO files come to surface. There are 2 ways to merge the translation. The first is to produce a new POT template file (additionally use the -e if you decided earlier to expand entities). Afterwards run msgmerge to merge the translation with the new POT file:

                                /usr/bin/msgmerge -o tmp.po LANG.po book.pot
                        

Now rename tmp.po to LANG.po and update your translation. Alternatively, xml2po provides the -u option, which does exactly these two steps for you. The advantage is, that it also runs msgfmt to give you a statistical output of translation status (count of translated, untranslated and fuzzy messages). Additionally use the -e if you decided earlier to expand entities:

                                /usr/bin/xml2po -u LANG.po book.xml
                        

SEE ALSO

msgmerge (1), msgfmt (1)

AUTHOR

This manual page was written by Daniel Leidert daniel.leidert@wgdd.de for the Debian system (but may be used by others). Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

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