Ubuntu Manpage: intltool-prepare - Prepare software to make use of intltool

NAME

       intltool-prepare - Prepare software to make use of intltool

SYNOPSIS

       intltool-prepare [option] [KEYWORD]...

DESCRIPTION

For software packages that include some specific type of translatable files (such as
.desktop and .soundlist), before they make use of intltool, translators have to dig
through them one by one, and add their localization into each file. This process is error
prone, since translators may include typing errors, or add their localization in wrong
encoding. Besides, translators may not alwas know other files (beside .po files) are
translatable.

intltool avoids all the problems above by extracting strings inside those translatable
files into po template (.pot) file. All translators need to care about is just translating
po files. Afterwards, intltool-merge(8) will merge localized strings into those files.

Before your software becomes intltool-aware, a few issues have to be sorted out, and
intltool-prepare tries to take care of all of them. intltool-prepare will:

• Extract all localized strings in .desktop style files (including ".desktop",
".soundlist", ".keys" and ".directory") into corresponding po files.

• Convert the translatable files into templates that don't contain any localization.

• Add the list of template files above into POTFILES.in.

• Add the list of old translatable files into .cvsignore (since they will be generated by
intltool later).

• Add the rules for generating these files into Makefile.am.

NOTE: You must change working directory to the top level source directory before running
intltool-prepare.

OPTIONS

       KEYWORD is a list of additional  keywords  beside  "Name",  "Comment"  and  "description".
       intltool-prepare will recognize any line starting with those KEYWORD and extract localized
       strings after equal sign ("=").

       -x
       --verbose
           Be verbose to give user additional feedback.

       -v
       --version
           Show version information.
       -h
       --help
           Show usage and basic help information.

REPORTING BUGS

       Report bugs to http://bugs.launchpad.net/intltool

AUTHOR