Re: xgettext: po comment format suggestion

[Bruno Haible]

Hello,

Josef Spillner wrote on 2009-01-02:
> the following patch to gettext-0.17 allows to strip the line numbers from the 
> location comments while leaving the filenames intact. This reduces the diffs 
> of po files for whenever a small change is to be committed to a version 
> control system. If this additional option flag is considered useful, please 
> add it.

In the normal workflow, xgettext is used to produce a .pot file, which is then
distributed to translators. The translators produce .po files.

The file names and line numbers are needed by the translators for gaining
some context; therefore I would not remove line numbers from .pot files.

But on the side of .po files, the translator can remove the line numbers from
his .po file after she is done with it (1) - and re-add them the next time she
starts to work on the .po file (2).

Step (1) can be done by "msgcat --no-location".
Step (2) can be done by simple use of msgmerge.

Bruno