How to edit the original string column in poedit?

Sujeeth picture Sujeeth · Sep 19, 2013 · Viewed 8.1k times · Source

Hi I am using poedit editor and i am not able to edit the original string column. I want to edit few words on original string column. Thanks in Advance

Answer

Václav Slavík picture Václav Slavík · Sep 20, 2013

(Oh well, I'll answer it here as well, for the benefit of the people who may find this post. But you won't like the answer any more than when I replied to you yesterday, when you asked on the Poedit mailing and in personal email to me.)

Short answer is: you can't. Read the introductory sections of the GNU gettext manual -- it explains the basic concepts of gettext translations very well, from both the programmer's and translator's perspectives, and it's clear you don't understand the concept of gettext.

Really, I mean it: please, please, read at the lest the intro part of the manual. The fine folks from the GNU gettext project put a lot of effort into it and if you've spent 5-10 minutes with it, you wouldn't need to ask this question.

Longer version:

Gettext uses text strings (typically in English) in the source code as translation keys. And it has tools to extract the strings and put them into a PO file. This ensures that only strings that are actually used are translated.

Changing the original string (called msgid -- it really is an ID) makes no sense. You would then have a translation of a string that is never used in the source code and so the translation would be guaranteed to never be used. Way to waste the translator's time, wouldn't it?

Want to "edit a few words"? Edit them in the source code. That's the only way that can ever work with gettext.