Localization/Tools/Pology

Pology

On Localization	Tools
Prerequisites	Gettext Tools
Related Articles	PO Diffing, Summiting Translation Branches, Review by Ascription
External Reading	n/a

About

Pology is a Python library and a set of command-line tools for processing PO files. The library aims to enable easy, fast and robust creation of scripts for tackling problems encountered in the "field", in everyday translation work. The tools perform various specialized operations, beyond that of other PO-handling software. Some of the tools are designed to (or have provisions to) treat a collection of PO files as an entity unto itself.

In Pology, no attempt is made to handle any other translation file format but PO. All of the end-user tools and library programming interfaces are geared towards the technical aspects, conventions and workflows around the PO format. For example, some tools explicitly take into account that PO files are frequently kept under version control, providing the functionality to support that workflow.

Language- and project-specific support is present throughout Pology, and it is designed to be easily expanded in the future. In the context of KDE, for example, there is a tool for validating PO files within the KDE Translation Project: it will recognize the "role" of the particular PO file (e.g. a native KDE code PO file, a .desktop PO file, Docbook PO file...) and then apply checks appropriate for that role. (This tool is run weekly on KDE servers, on PO files of all languages, and results announced to kde-i18n-doc mailing list.)

Pology source distribution can be fetched from its home page at:

http://pology.nedohodnik.net

The home page also links to on-line documentation (user manual and library API), and provides instructions for browsing or fetching the current development code.