Re: gettext: msgcomm vs. msgcat and the handling of empty records

[Bruno Haible]

Karl Eichwalder writes:
> > +- Consider to add the --omit-header switch to msgcat

No, without header a PO file with translations does not contain enough
information for parsing the PO file (namely, the encoding).

> > remove msgcomm since all it can do is covered by msgcat.

msgcomm does the merging differently than msgcat.

> Oops, an oversight by me occurred and I'd say that's a 'msgcat' bug.
> While counting records 'msgcat' silently ignores untranslated

Sure. msgcat is made for combining translator efforts made in
different files. Untranslated messages represent no translator effort.

> thus some of my strategies to deal with compendia, proofreading jobs
> and some statistical issues are broken

Then you'll probably want to use msgcomm and/or msgattrib in some way.

> it isn't possible to remove all translations given .po file
> ('msghack' offered --empty to empty the contents of a po .file).

'msgfilter sed -e d' empties the contents of a po file as well.

Bruno