= PO Templates =

Some people may be confused by the term '''PO ''Template'' ''' because in traditional Gettext environments they have only worked with '''PO ''Files'' '''. Here is a short explanation of the term.

== in Gettext ==

If you never encountered PO templates before, you have either only been working with existing PO files (i.e. improving existing translations) or have been creating new PO files using xgettext (or some other tool). For example, to start new Esperanto translations, you may have run a command like this in your po directory:

{{{
$ xgettext -o eo.po -D ../src
}}}

Then you started translating by filling out ''eo.po''. Actually, this is where you just created a PO template file but you did not save it. The correct approach is to have the template generated once during build and start new translations by copying the template file. The gettext package provides the ''msginit'' utility to do the copying and adjust header information in the newly created PO file.

{{{
$ xgettext -o mydomain.pot -D ../src
$ msginit --locale=eo
}}}

So, a ''PO template'' is no more than a generic ''PO file'' without any translations filled out and generic header information. Using xgettext and msginit to create a template and PO files is also described in the [[http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html|Gettext manual]], sections 5 and 6.


== in Launchpad ==

In Launchpad you make translating your project possible by [[/../YourProject/ImportingTemplates|importing a PO template file]]. After the import, all the English strings from the template are available in Launchpad for being translated. When a translator starts translating your project into their language, for which there were no translations before, a new (virtual) PO file is created in the Launchpad database. It becomes a real PO file when you chose to download it.

||<tablestyle="width: 100%;" style="background: #2a2929; font-weight: bold; color: #f6bc05;">Remember:|| Please make sure to keep the PO template in Launchpad current by importing updated versions of the file you create from your source code. This is most easily done by setting up its import from a Bazaar branch that you push your code to.||