(gettext) Files

 
 1.4 Files Conveying Translations
 ================================
 
 The letters PO in `.po' files means Portable Object, to distinguish it
 from `.mo' files, where MO stands for Machine Object.  This paradigm,
 as well as the PO file format, is inspired by the NLS standard
 developed by Uniforum, and first implemented by Sun in their Solaris
 system.
 
    PO files are meant to be read and edited by humans, and associate
 each original, translatable string of a given package with its
 translation in a particular target language.  A single PO file is
 dedicated to a single target language.  If a package supports many
 languages, there is one such PO file per language supported, and each
 package has its own set of PO files.  These PO files are best created by
 the `xgettext' program, and later updated or refreshed through the
 `msgmerge' program.  Program `xgettext' extracts all marked messages
 from a set of C files and initializes a PO file with empty
 translations.  Program `msgmerge' takes care of adjusting PO files
 between releases of the corresponding sources, commenting obsolete
 entries, initializing new ones, and updating all source line
 references.  Files ending with `.pot' are kind of base translation
 files found in distributions, in PO file format.
 
    MO files are meant to be read by programs, and are binary in nature.
 A few systems already offer tools for creating and handling MO files as
 part of the Native Language Support coming with the system, but the
 format of these MO files is often different from system to system, and
 non-portable.  The tools already provided with these systems don't
 support all the features of GNU `gettext'.  Therefore GNU `gettext'
 uses its own format for MO files.  Files ending with `.gmo' are really
 MO files, when it is known that these files use the GNU format.
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