msgfmt creates message object files from portable object files (filename.po), without changing the portable object files.
The .po file contains messages displayed to users by system utilities or by application programs. .po files can be edited, and the messages in them can be rewritten in any language supported by the system.
If input file is -, standard input is read.
The xgettext utility can be used to create .po files from script or programs.
msgfmt interprets data as characters according to the current setting of the LC_CTYPE locale category.
Add directory to list for input files search.
Use fuzzy entries in output. If this option is not specified, fuzzy entries are not included into the output.
Specify output file name as output-file. All domain directives and duplicate msgids in the .po file are ignored. If output-file is -, output is written to standard output.
Direct the utility to work strictly following the UniForum/Sun implementation. Currently this only affects the naming of the output file. If this option is not given the name of the output file is the same as the domain name. If the strict UniForum mode is enabled the suffix .mo is added to the file name if it is not already present.
Detect and diagnose input file anomalies which might represent translation errors. The msgid and msgstr strings are studied and compared. It is considered abnormal that one string starts or ends with a newline while the other does not.
Also, if the string represents a format string used in a printf-like function both strings should have the same number of % format specifiers, with matching types. If the flag c-format or possible-c-format appears in the special comment #, for this entry a check is performed. For example, the check will diagnose using %.*s against %s, or %d against %s, or %d against %x. It can even handle positional parameters.
The filename.po operands are treated as portable object files. The format of portable object files is defined in EXTENDED DESCRIPTION.
Specifies one or more locale names. See gettext message handling functions for more information.
Specifies locale name.
Specifies locale name for all categories. If defined, overrides LANG, LC_CTYPE and LC_MESSAGES.
Specifies locale name for character handling.
Specifies messaging locale, and if present overrides LANG for messages.
The standard output is not used unless the option-argument of the -o option is specified as -.
The format of portable object files (.po files) is defined as follows. Each .po file contains one or more lines, with each line containing either a comment or a statement. Comments start the line with a hash mark (#) and end with the newline character. All comments and empty lines are ignored. The format of a statement is:
directive value
Each directive starts at the beginning of the line and is separated from value by white space (such as one or more space or tab characters). value consists of one or more quoted strings separated by white space. If two or more strings are specified as value, they are normalized into single string using the string normalization syntax the same as the ISO C language. Use any of the following types of directives:
domain domainname
msgid message_identifier
msgid_plural untranslated_string_plural
msgstr message_string
msgstr[n] message_string
The behavior of the domain directive is affected by the options used. See OPTIONS for the behavior when the -o option is specified. If the -o option is not specified, the behavior of the domain directive is as follows: (1) All msgids from the beginning of each .po file to the first domain directive are put into a default message object file, messages (or messages.mo if --strict option is specified). (2) When msgfmt encounters a domain domainname directive in the .po file, all following msgids until the next domain directive are put into the message object file domainname (or domainname.mo if --strict option is specified). (3) Duplicate msgids are defined in the scope of each domain. That is, a msgid is considered a duplicate only if the identical msgid exists in the same domain. (4) All duplicate msgids are ignored.
The msgid directive specifies the value of a message identifier associated with the directive that follows it. The msgid_plural directive specifies the plural form message specified to the plural message handling functions ngettext(), dngettext() or dcngettext(). The message_identifier string identifies a target string to be used at retrieval time. Each statement containing a msgid directive must be followed by a statement containing a msgstr directive or msgstr[n] directives.
The msgstr directive specifies the target string associated with the message_identifier string declared in the immediately preceding msgid directive.
The msgstr[n] (where n = 0, 1, 2, ...) directive specifies the target string to be used with plural form handling functions ngettext(), dngettext() and dcngettext().
Message strings can contain the escape sequences \n for newline, \t for tab, \v for vertical tab, \b for backspace, \r for carriage return, \f for formfeed, \\ for backslash, \" for double quote, \ddd for octal bit pattern, and \xHH for hexadecimal bit pattern.
Comments should be in one of the following formats:
# translator-comments
#. automatic-comments
#: reference...
#, flag
The comments that starts with #. and #: are automatically generated by xgettext utility. The #: comments indicate the location of the msgid string in the source files in filename:line format. The #. comments are generated when -c option of the xgettext utility is specified. These comments are informative only and silently ignored by the msgfmt utility.
The #, comments requires one or more flags separated by comma (,) character. The following flags can be specified:
This flag can be generated by the msgmerge utility or can be inserted by the translator. It shows that the msgstr string might not be a correct translation (anymore). Only the translator can judge if the translation requires further modification, or is acceptable as is. Once satisfied with the translation, the translator then removes this fuzzy flag. The msgmerge programs inserts this when it combined the msgid and msgstr entries after fuzzy search only.
If this flag is specified, the msgfmt utility will not generate the entry for the immediately following msgid in the output message catalog.
The flags are automatically added by the xgettext utility and they should not be added manually. The c-format flag indicates that the msgid string is used as format string by printf-like functions. In case the c-format flag is given for a string the msgfmt utility does some more tests to check to validity of the translation.
The msgid entry with empty string ("") is called the header entry and treated specially. If the message string for the header entry contains nplurals=value, the value indicates the number of plural forms. For example, if nplurals=4, there are 4 plural forms. If nplurals is defined, there should be plural=expression in the same line, separated by a semicolon (;) character. The expression is a C language expression to determine which version of msgstr[n] to be used based on the value of n, the last argument of ngettext(), dngettext() or dcngettext(). For example:
nplurals=2; plural=n == 1 ? 0 : 1 |
indicates that there are 2 plural forms in the language; msgstr[0] is used if n == 1, otherwise msgstr[1] is used. Another example:
nplurals=3; plural=n==1 ? 0 : n==2 ? 1 : 2 |
indicates that there are 3 plural forms in the language; msgstr[0] is used if n == 1, msgstr[1] is used if n == 2, otherwise msgstr[2] is used.
If the header entry contains charset=codeset string, the codeset is used to indicate the codeset to be used to encode the message strings. If the output string's codeset is different from the message string's codeset, codeset conversion from the message strings's codeset to the output string's codeset will be performed upon the call of gettext(), dgettext(), dcgettext(), ngettext(), dngettext(), and dcngettext(). The output string's codeset is determined by the current locale's codeset (the return value of nl_langinfo(CODESET)) by default, and can be changed by the call of bind_textdomain_codeset().
Neither msgfmt nor any gettext() routine imposes a limit on the total length of a message. Installing message catalogs under the C locale is pointless, since they are ignored for the sake of efficiency.
Example 1: Examples of creating message objects from message files.
In this example module1.po and module2.po are portable message objects files.
example% cat module1.po # default domain "messages" msgid "msg 1" msgstr "msg 1 translation" # domain "help_domain" msgid "help 2" msgstr "help 2 translation" # domain "error_domain" msgid "error 3" msgstr "error 3 translation" example% cat module2.po # default domain "messages" msgid "mesg 4" msgstr "mesg 4 translation" # domain "error_domain" msgid "error 5" msgstr "error 5 translation" # domain "window_domain" msgid "window 6" msgstr "window 6 translation" |
The following command will produce the output files, messages, help_domain, and error_domain.
example% msgfmt module1.po |
The following command will produce the output files, messages, help_domain, error_domain, and window_domain.
example% msgfmt module1.po module2.po |
The following example will produce the output file hello.mo.
example% msgfmt -o hello.mo module1.po module2.po |