Can someone break how the localization file (.mo, .po) works?

Question

I'm trying to grock gettext.

This is how I think it works -

First you use some kind of po editor and tell him to scan the directory for your application, create these “.po” files, the application creates a po file for each file to be scanned that contains a line in a programming language, then compile them into binary mo files to be analyzed gettext, and you call the method using a high-level API, such as Zend_Translateindicating that you want to use gettextit, you can configure it to cache translations, and it simply returns those.

The part that I really don’t understand about is how the editing of the po files is actually done, this is manual - right? Then, when the compilation is completed, of course, the application relies on the binaries mo.

And if someone could provide useful Linux applications for editing files .po, I would be grateful.

Answer 1

An NLS tutorial using GNU gettext should help you understand the process.

As for editing .po files, there are at least two applications (except for vi :-): gtranslator and poedit .