[poedit-users] Poedit not updating comments on Update from POT file

[g***@verizon.net]

Hi all,<br /><br />I've been using poedit for about 8 months on a C language project that will be tranlated into 15 languages other than English.&nbsp; We're still modifying the source code so while we have tested a translation to make sure that everything is working we haven't done extensive translations yet.&nbsp; <br /><br />I spent some time this morning importing the latest string changes into my main .po file and then edited the comments on a large number of existing strings as well as the new ones.&nbsp; I then saved the result as a .pot file.&nbsp; After opening my english.po file and updateing from the pot file, I noticed that the comments for the strings that were already in my englist.po file, but didn't chage, didn't have their comments updated. The only comments that changed were for strings that had changed.<br /><br />Am I missing an option someplace or should this be entered as and enhancement request?<br /><br />Regards,<br /><br />Greg Wilson-Lindberg

[Václav Slavík]

Hi,

Post by g***@verizon.net
Am I missing an option someplace or should this be entered as and enhancement request?

Neither. You are misunderstanding how gettext is meant to work and the first course of action would be to read the GNU gettext manual. It is quite good and explains the concepts well.

In short (you should still read the manual, though!), POT files are not meant to be edited like this, they are *generated* automatically from source code.

As a consequence, you don't manually put comments into a POT file. The comments that you can add to entries in a PO (not POT) file are *translator's* comments, specific to this translation and meant to explain problems etc., they're translator's work notes. They have no relevancy to translations into other languages.

If you want to have some comments present in all translations (e.g. explanation of terms specific to your app, instructions for translators, ...), then you need to use specially formatted comments in the source code. That's because POT files are, yes, generated automatically from source code. The gettext manual explains this in detail. Do have a look.

Regards,
Vaclav