[Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#300268: /usr/share/man/man5/passwd.5.gz contains inaccurate information

[Christian Perrier]

> I plan convert all shadow man pages documentation to XML (this is much
> more commont format for documentation) and prepare translation framework
> basing on this source form. Probably will be used gnome-doc-utils (or

....which does not prevent using PO format for documentation
translation. The PO format is *designed* for translation handling,
with good handling of "upstream" changes and impact on
translations. All free software translation teams use PO tools for
handling translation work because of the wide availability of tools
and utilities (compendium, dictionaries, automation tools, web
translation projects such as Pootle....)

So, while the documentation (including man pages) benefits from being
handled from a XML source, translations can still be handled with PO
files and gettext utilities. And, yes, po4a also has a XML module
(another tool is poxml which is for instance used in Debian installer
documentation).

So, well, from the translators point of view, handling translations
with gettext is really a huge enhancement.