moz2po converts Mozilla files to PO files. It wraps converters that handle .properties, .dtd, .xhtml and some strange Mozilla files. The tool can extract from an XPI file and build your complete XPI file from your PO files or work with files from Mozilla CVS. Thus providing a complete roundtrip for Mozilla localisation using PO files and PO editors.
Caution: The conversion to and from XPI files is no longer actively supported, please work directly against Mozilla CVS files.
moz2po [options] <xpi|dir> <po> po2moz [options] <po> <xpi|dir>
Options (moz2po):
--version | show program's version number and exit |
-h, --help | show this help message and exit |
--manpage | output a manpage based on the help |
--progress=PROGRESS | show progress as: dots, none, bar, names, verbose |
--errorlevel=ERRORLEVEL | show errorlevel as: none, message, exception, traceback |
-iINPUT, --input=INPUT | read from INPUT in inc, it, *, dtd, properties formats |
-xEXCLUDE, --exclude=EXCLUDE | exclude names matching EXCLUDE from input paths |
-oOUTPUT, --output=OUTPUT | write to OUTPUT in it.po, it.pot, manifest, xhtml.po, xhtml.pot, ini.po, ini.pot, rdf, js, *, html.po, html.pot, inc.po, inc.pot, dtd.po, dtd.pot, properties.po, properties.pot formats |
-tTEMPLATE, --template=TEMPLATE | read from TEMPLATE in it, *, properties, dtd, inc formats |
--psyco=MODE | use psyco to speed up the operation, modes: none, full, profile |
-P, --pot | output PO Templates (.pot) rather than PO files (.po) |
--duplicates=DUPLICATESTYLE | what to do with duplicate strings (identical source text): merge (default), msgid_comment, keep, msgid_comment_all |
Options (po2moz):
--version | show program's version number and exit |
-h, --help | show this help message and exit |
--manpage | output a manpage based on the help |
--progress=PROGRESS | show progress as: dots, none, bar, names, verbose |
--errorlevel=ERRORLEVEL | show errorlevel as: none, message, exception, traceback |
-iINPUT, --input=INPUT | read from INPUT in dtd.po, dtd.pot, ini.po, ini.pot, inc.po, inc.pot, manifest, it.po, it.pot, *, html.po, html.pot, js, rdf, properties.po, properties.pot, xhtml.po, xhtml.pot formats |
-xEXCLUDE, --exclude=EXCLUDE | exclude names matching EXCLUDE from input paths |
-oOUTPUT, --output=OUTPUT | write to OUTPUT in dtd, *, inc, it, properties formats |
-tTEMPLATE, --template=TEMPLATE | read from TEMPLATE in dtd, *, inc, it, properties formats |
--psyco=MODE | use psyco to speed up the operation, modes: none, full, profile |
-lLOCALE, --locale=LOCALE | set output locale (required as this sets the directory names) |
--clonexpi=CLONEXPI | clone xpi structure from the given xpi file |
--fuzzy | use translations marked fuzzy |
--nofuzzy | don't use translations marked fuzzy (default) |
See this page for more information on creating Mozilla POT files.
After extracting the en-US l10n files, you can run the following command:
moz2po -P l10n/en-US pot
This creates a set of POT (-P
) files in the pot
directory from the Mozilla files in l10n/en-US
.
moz2po -P en-US.xpi pot
Creating set of POT (-P
) files from the American English XPI (en-US.xpi
) and placing them in pot
for use as PO Templates.
If you want to create a set of POT files with another base language try the following:
moz2po -P fr-FR.xpi fr-pot
This will create a set of POT files in fr-pot
that have French as your source language.
If you have existing translations (Mozilla related or other Babelzilla files) and you wish to convert them to PO for future translation then the following generic instructions will work:
moz2po -t en-US af-ZA af-ZA_pofiles
This will combine the untranslated template en-US files from en-US
combine them with your existing translations in af-ZA
and output PO files to af-ZA_pofiles
.
moz2po -t l10n/fr l10n/xh po/xh
For those who are not English fluent you can do the same with another languages. In this case msgid
will contain the French text from l10n/fr
. This is useful for translating where the translators other languages is not English but French, Spanish or Portuguese. Please make sure that the source languages i.e. the msgid
language is fully translated as against en-US.
po2moz -lzu-ZA -t en-US.xpi zu zu-ZA.xpi
Create a Zulu language (-lzu-ZA
) XPI called zu-ZA.xpi
from translations found in zu
using en-US.xpi
as a template. We use a template to ensure that our DTD and .properties files appear exactly as those in en-US
po2moz -t l10n/en-US po/xh l10n/xh
Create Mozilla files using the templates files in l10n/en-US
(see above for how to create them) with PO translations in po/xh
and ouput them to l10n/xh
. The files now in l10n/xh
are ready for submission to Mozilla and can be used to build a language pack or translated version of Mozilla.
You can perform the bulk of your work (99%) with moz2po.
Localisation of XHTML is not yet perfect, you might want to work with the files directly.
Bug 129 tracks the outstanding features which would allow complete localisation of Mozilla including; all help, start pages, rdf files, etc. It also tracks some bugs.
Accesskeys don't yet work in .properties files and in several cases where the Mozilla .dtd files don't follow the normal conventions, for example in security/manager/chrome/pippki/pref-ssl.dtd.po
. You might also want to check the files mentioned in this bug 329444 where mistakes in the DTD-definitions cause problems in the matching of accelerators with the text.
You might want to give special attention to the following files since it contains customisations that are not really translations.
Also, all width, height and size specifications need to be edited with feedback from testing the translated interfaces.
There are some constructed strings in the Mozilla code which we can't do much about. Take good care to read the localisation notes. For an example, see mail/chrome/messenger/downloadheaders.dtd.po
. In that specific file, the localisation note from the DTD file is lost, so take good care of those.
The file extension of the original Mozilla file is required to tell the Toolkit how to do the conversion. Therefore, a file like foo.dtd must be named foo.dtd.po in order to po2moz
to recognise it as a DTD file.