NAME¶
podebconf-display-po - display content of a PO file in a debconf interface
SYNOPSIS¶
podebconf-display-po [
-h] [
-f FRONTEND]
file.po
DESCRIPTION¶
As with any other localization work, translators should test their translations
by running the program they are working on. But this is a very hard job with
complicated configuration scripts because there is no automatic way to have
all messages displayed.
The
podebconf-display-po program could be called the
Poor Man
Localization Checker for debconf. It parses a PO file, tries to guess what
the original templates file did look like, and displays messages in a debconf
interface.
Of course being root is not mandatory, and there is no interaction between
podebconf-display-po and system-wide debconf settings.
OPTIONS¶
- -h, --help
- Display a usage summary and exit.
- -f, --frontend=FRONTEND
- Select an alternate debconf frontend.
CAVEATS¶
- •
- As podebconf-display-po relies on "debconf" to display
questions, your environment must be setup to display localized questions
in the language of the PO file. If you want to check a translation in
another language, you need to temporarily change your settings, e.g.
$ LANGUAGE=de podebconf-display-po de.po
If the PO file cannot be converted into your current encoding, English
strings are displayed instead of the localized ones. You then have to
switch to a UTF-8 environment to prevent encoding mismatch.
- •
- Prior to 0.8.3, "po-debconf" did only insert the field name in
PO files. But some discussions on mailing-lists showed that text format
does depend on template type, e.g. string and boolean types are different
because the former is an open question and user has to enter some text
input, whereas the latter is basically a Yes/No question. Authors have to
think about it when writing their templates files, but translators also
have to be aware.
This is achieved when PO files are generated by po-debconf >= 0.8.3,
template type is inserted in PO files. With older versions,
podebconf-display-po has a trivial algorithm to determine original
template type, and may sometimes be wrong.
- •
- The "dialog" frontend, when based upon "whiptail",
traps system signals and thus podebconf-display-po cannot be
interrupted by "Ctrl-C" when using this frontend.
SEE ALSO¶
debconf(1)
AUTHOR¶
Denis Barbier <barbier@linuxfr.org>