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📋 NAME

msginit — create a new PO file

🚀 Quick Reference

Use Case	Command	Description
Create a PO file from a POT file	msginit -i messages.pot -o lv.po	🆕 Initialize a new PO file for a specific locale (e.g., Latvian)
Specify target locale	msginit -l de_DE.UTF-8	🌍 Set locale to German (Germany) with UTF-8 encoding
Mark as machine‑generated	msginit --no-translator	🤖 Declare no human translator; automatic generation
Output to standard output	msginit -o -	📤 Write PO file to stdout
Use Java properties input	msginit -P -i input.properties	🔧 Assume input is Java .properties syntax

📖 Invoking the msginit Program

msginit [OPTION]

The msginit program creates a new PO file, initializing the meta information with values from the user’s environment.

The following header fields of a PO file are automatically filled, when possible:

• Project-Id-Version — 🧩 Guessed from the configure script or other files in the current directory.
• PO-Revision-Date — 📅 Taken from PO-Creation-Date in the input POT file, or current date is used.
• Last-Translator — 👤 Taken from the user’s password file entry and mailer configuration files.
• Language-Team, Language — 🌐 Set according to the current locale and the predefined list of translation teams.
• MIME-Version, Content-Type, Content-Transfer-Encoding — 📄 Set according to the content of the POT file and the current locale. If the POT file contains charset=UTF-8, it means non‑ASCII characters are present and UTF‑8 is kept; otherwise, the locale’s encoding is used.
• Plural-Forms — 🔢 First looked up from the embedded table. As an experimental feature, you can instruct msginit to use information from Unicode CLDR by setting the GETTEXTCLDRDIR environment variable. The program will look for a file named common/supplemental/plurals.xml under that directory. You can get the CLDR data from http://cldr.unicode.org/.

📥 Input File Location

• -i INPUTFILE, --input=INPUTFILE — 📂 Input POT file.

If no INPUTFILE is given, the current directory is searched for the POT file. If it is -, standard input is read.

📤 Output File Location

• -o FILE, --output-file=FILE — 💾 Write output to specified PO file.

If no output file is given, it depends on the --locale option or the user’s locale setting. If it is -, the results are written to standard output.

🔧 Input File Syntax

• -P, --properties-input — ☕ Assume the input file is a Java ResourceBundle in Java .properties syntax, not in PO file syntax.
• --stringtable-input — 🍏 Assume the input file is a NeXTstep/GNUstep localized resource file in .strings syntax, not in PO file syntax.

⚙ Output Details

• -l LL_CC[.ENCODING], --locale=LL_CC[.ENCODING] — 🌍 Set target locale. LL should be a language code, CC a country code. The optional part .ENCODING specifies the encoding (most often .UTF-8). The command locale -a lists all installed locales. Default is the user’s locale setting.
• --no-translator — 🤖 Declares that the PO file will not have a human translator and is instead automatically generated.
• --color, --color=WHEN — 🎨 Specify whether or when to use colors and other text attributes. See note: The --color option for details.
• --style=STYLE_FILE — 🎭 Specify the CSS style rule file to use for --color. See note: The --style option for details.
• -p, --properties-output — ☕ Write out a Java ResourceBundle in Java .properties syntax. Note that this file format doesn’t support plural forms and silently drops obsolete messages.
• --stringtable-output — 🍏 Write out a NeXTstep/GNUstep localized resource file in .strings syntax. Note that this file format doesn’t support plural forms.
• -w NUMBER, --width=NUMBER — 📏 Set the output page width. Long strings in the output files will be split across multiple lines to ensure that each line’s width (number of screen columns) is ≤ the given NUMBER.
• --no-wrap — 🚫 Do not break long message lines. Message lines wider than the output page width will not be split. Only file reference lines wider than the output page width will be split.

ℹ Informative Output

• -h, --help — ❓ Display this help and exit.
• -V, --version — ℹ Output version information and exit.

📋 NAME 🚀 Quick Reference 📖 Invoking the msginit Program