elinks/po/perl/README

PURPOSE
=======

The scripts in this directory scan the PO files and search for
translations that assign the same accelerator to multiple buttons
in a dialog box or to multiple items in a menu.

In addition to this static checking, ELinks can also detect
conflicting accelerators at run time, if CONFIG_DEBUG is defined.
However, that requires the translator to run ELinks and manually scan
through all menus and dialogs, so some conflicts can be left
unnoticed.  The static checker will also detect conflicts that can
only occur on operating systems or configurations that the translator
is not currently using.


USAGE
=====

When a programmer adds a translatable string to the C source code of
ELinks, and the string contains an accelerator, he should also add a
special "gettext_accelerator_context" comment that names the menu or
dialog box in which the string will be used.  See the documentation of
msgaccel-prepare for the details.

When a programmer or translator runs "make update-po" in the elinks/po
directory, msgaccel-prepare reads the "gettext_accelerator_context"
comments in the source files and generates "accelerator_context"
comments in elinks.pot.  Then, msgmerge copies them from elinks.pot to
*.po.

When a translator edits a *.po file, she does not alter the
"accelerator_context" comments.

When a translator runs "make check-po" in the elinks/po directory,
msgaccel-check reads the "accelerator_context" comments in the *.po
file, checks the accelerators in the translations, and displays any
conflicts it finds.


FILES
=====

See each file for copying conditions.

msgaccel-prepare reads elinks.pot and the source files to which it
refers, and writes a new elinks.pot with information from
"gettext_accelerator_context" comments.

msgaccel-check reads just one *.po file and scans it for conflicts.
It does not access the C source files.

Locale/PO.pm was originally imported from Locale-PO-0.16 on CPAN, and
has since been patched to make it more suitable for these scripts.
(The build system, documentation, and test cases of Locale-PO were
not imported, because it isn't obvious where they should be placed.)
All changes should be sent back to the author for possible inclusion
in the standard version.   


TO DO
=====

Make sure that po/Makefile won't fail just because it can't find Perl.
This may already be the case, but check it.

Fix the issues documented in the BUGS section of each file.