10.1.8 Input file interpretation

‘-c’

‘--check’

Perform all the checks implied by --check-format, --check-header, --check-domain.

‘--check-format’

Check language dependent format strings.

If the string represents a format string used in a printf-like function both strings should have the same number of ‘%’ format specifiers, with matching types. If the flag c-format or possible-c-format appears in the special comment <#,> for this entry a check is performed. For example, the check will diagnose using ‘%.*s’ against ‘%s’, or ‘%d’ against ‘%s’, or ‘%d’ against ‘%x’. It can even handle positional parameters.

Normally the xgettext program automatically decides whether a string is a format string or not. This algorithm is not perfect, though. It might regard a string as a format string though it is not used in a printf-like function and so msgfmt might report errors where there are none.

To solve this problem the programmer can dictate the decision to the xgettext program (see section C Format Strings). The translator should not consider removing the flag from the <#,> line. This "fix" would be reversed again as soon as msgmerge is called the next time.

‘--check-header’

Verify presence and contents of the header entry. See section Filling in the Header Entry, for a description of the various fields in the header entry.

‘--check-domain’

Check for conflicts between domain directives and the --output-file option

‘-C’

‘--check-compatibility’

Check that GNU msgfmt behaves like X/Open msgfmt. This will give an error when attempting to use the GNU extensions.

‘--check-accelerators[=char]’

Check presence of keyboard accelerators for menu items. This is based on the convention used in some GUIs that a keyboard accelerator in a menu item string is designated by an immediately preceding ‘&’ character. Sometimes a keyboard accelerator is also called "keyboard mnemonic". This check verifies that if the untranslated string has exactly one ‘&’ character, the translated string has exactly one ‘&’ as well. If this option is given with a char argument, this char should be a non-alphanumeric character and is used as keyboard accelerator mark instead of ‘&’.

‘-f’

‘--use-fuzzy’

Use fuzzy entries in output. Note that using this option is usually wrong, because fuzzy messages are exactly those which have not been validated by a human translator.

This document was generated on August 27, 2013 using texi2html 5.0.