Provided by: po4a_0.69-1_all bug

NAME

       Locale::Po4a::Po - PO file manipulation module

SYNOPSIS

           use Locale::Po4a::Po;
           my $pofile=Locale::Po4a::Po->new();

           # Read PO file
           $pofile->read('file.po');

           # Add an entry
           $pofile->push('msgid' => 'Hello', 'msgstr' => 'bonjour',
                         'flags' => "wrap", 'reference'=>'file.c:46');

           # Extract a translation
           $pofile->gettext("Hello"); # returns 'bonjour'

           # Write back to a file
           $pofile->write('otherfile.po');

DESCRIPTION

       Locale::Po4a::Po is a module that allows you to manipulate message catalogs. You can load
       and write from/to a file (which extension is often po), you can build new entries on the
       fly or request for the translation of a string.

       For a more complete description of message catalogs in the PO format and their use, please
       refer to the info documentation of the gettext program (node "`PO Files"').

       This module is part of the po4a project, which objective is to use PO files (designed at
       origin to ease the translation of program messages) to translate everything, including
       documentation (man page, info manual), package description, debconf templates, and
       everything which may benefit from this.

OPTIONS ACCEPTED BY THIS MODULE

       --porefs type
           Specify the reference format. Argument type can be one of never to not produce any
           reference, file to only specify the file without the line number, counter to replace
           line number by an increasing counter, and full to include complete references
           (default: full).

       --wrap-po no|newlines|number (default: 76)
           Specify how the po file should be wrapped. This gives the choice between either files
           that are nicely wrapped but could lead to git conflicts, or files that are easier to
           handle automatically, but harder to read for humans.

           Historically, the gettext suite has reformatted the po files at the 77th column for
           cosmetics. This option specifies the behavior of po4a. If set to a numerical value,
           po4a will wrap the po file after this column and after newlines in the content. If set
           to newlines, po4a will only split the msgid and msgstr after newlines in the content.
           If set to no, po4a will not wrap the po file at all.  The reference comments are
           always wrapped by the gettext tools that we use internally.

           Note that this option has no impact on how the msgid and msgstr are wrapped, ie on how
           newlines are added to the content of these strings.

       --msgid-bugs-address email@address
           Set the report address for msgid bugs. By default, the created POT files have no
           Report-Msgid-Bugs-To fields.

       --copyright-holder string
           Set the copyright holder in the POT header. The default value is "Free Software
           Foundation, Inc."

       --package-name string
           Set the package name for the POT header. The default is "PACKAGE".

       --package-version string
           Set the package version for the POT header. The default is "VERSION".

Functions concerning entire message catalogs

       new()
           Creates a new message catalog. If an argument is provided, it's the name of a PO file
           we should load.

       read($)
           Reads a PO file (which name is given as argument).  Previously existing entries in
           self are not removed, the new ones are added to the end of the catalog.

       write($)
           Writes the current catalog to the given file.

       write_if_needed($$)
           Like write, but if the PO or POT file already exists, the object will be written in a
           temporary file which will be compared with the existing file to check if the update is
           needed (this avoids to change a POT just to update a line reference or the POT-
           Creation-Date field).

       filter($)
           This function extracts a catalog from an existing one. Only the entries having a
           reference in the given file will be placed in the resulting catalog.

           This function parses its argument, converts it to a Perl function definition, evals
           this definition and filters the fields for which this function returns true.

           I love Perl sometimes ;)

       to_utf8()
           Recodes to UTF-8 the PO's msgstrs. Does nothing if the charset is not specified in the
           PO file ("CHARSET" value), or if it's already UTF-8 or ASCII.

Functions to use a message catalog for translations

       gettext($%)
           Request the translation of the string given as argument in the current catalog.  The
           function returns the original (untranslated) string if the string was not found.

           After the string to translate, you can pass a hash of extra arguments. Here are the
           valid entries:

           wrap
               boolean indicating whether we can consider that whitespaces in string are not
               important. If yes, the function canonizes the string before looking for a
               translation, and wraps the result.

           wrapcol
               the column at which we should wrap (default: 76).

       stats_get()
           Returns statistics about the hit ratio of gettext since the last time that
           stats_clear() was called. Please note that it's not the same statistics than the one
           printed by msgfmt --statistic. Here, it's statistics about recent usage of the PO
           file, while msgfmt reports the status of the file.  Example of use:

               [some use of the PO file to translate stuff]

               ($percent,$hit,$queries) = $pofile->stats_get();
               print "So far, we found translations for $percent\%  ($hit of $queries) of strings.\n";

       stats_clear()
           Clears the statistics about gettext hits.

Functions to build a message catalog

       push(%)
           Push a new entry at the end of the current catalog. The arguments should form a hash
           table. The valid keys are:

           msgid
               the string in original language.

           msgstr
               the translation.

           reference
               an indication of where this string was found. Example: file.c:46 (meaning in
               'file.c' at line 46). It can be a space-separated list in case of multiple
               occurrences.

           comment
               a comment added here manually (by the translators). The format here is free.

           automatic
               a comment which was automatically added by the string extraction program. See the
               --add-comments option of the xgettext program for more information.

           flags
               space-separated list of all defined flags for this entry.

               Valid flags are: c-text, python-text, lisp-text, elisp-text, librep-text,
               smalltalk-text, java-text, awk-text, object-pascal-text, ycp-text, tcl-text, wrap,
               no-wrap and fuzzy.

               See the gettext documentation for their meaning.

           type
               this is mostly an internal argument: it is used while gettextizing documents. The
               idea here is to parse both the original and the translation into a PO object, and
               merge them, using one's msgid as msgid and the other's msgid as msgstr. To make
               sure that things get ok, each msgid in PO objects are given a type, based on their
               structure (like "chapt", "sect1", "p" and so on in DocBook). If the types of
               strings are not the same, that means that both files do not share the same
               structure, and the process reports an error.

               This information is written as automatic comment in the PO file since this gives
               to translators some context about the strings to translate.

           wrap
               boolean indicating whether whitespaces can be mangled in cosmetic reformattings.
               If true, the string is canonized before use.

               This information is written to the PO file using the wrap or no-wrap flag.

           wrapcol
               the column at which we should wrap (default: 76).

               This information is not written to the PO file.

Miscellaneous functions

       count_entries()
           Returns the number of entries in the catalog (without the header).

       count_entries_doc()
           Returns the number of entries in document. If a string appears multiple times in the
           document, it will be counted multiple times.

       msgid($)
           Returns the msgid of the given number.

       msgid_doc($)
           Returns the msgid with the given position in the document.

       type_doc($)
           Returns the type of the msgid with the given position in the document. This is
           probably only useful to gettextization, and it's stored separately from
           {$msgid}{'type'} because the later location may be overwritten by another type when
           the $msgid is duplicated in the master document.

       get_charset()
           Returns the character set specified in the PO header. If it hasn't been set, it will
           return "UTF-8".

       set_charset($)
           This sets the character set of the PO header to the value specified in its first
           argument. If you never call this function (and no file with a specified character set
           is read), the default value is left to "UTF-8". This value doesn't change the behavior
           of this module, it's just used to fill that field in the header, and to return it in
           get_charset().

AUTHORS

        Denis Barbier <barbier@linuxfr.org>
        Martin Quinson (mquinson#debian.org)