Bug#378899: [Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#378899: passwd: [Intl:de] German man page out of sync

[Christian Perrier]

> Is there a generic place for man page translation in Debian? I ask,

No. This is mostly because most man pages are not native Debian stuff
but rather upstream-related.

Moreover, the "traditional" way to translate man pages is mostly
inefficient as we see with these problems of outdated manpages....

The use of po4a or poxml allows relying on the PO format to handle
translation. The main advantage here is that the resulting informaiton
is *always* up-to-date.

With po4a, at least, when a PO file for a given man page is incmplete,
po4a assembles English and translated parts so that the result is
exactly identical top the original English. In short only non fuzzy
strings of the translation are used.

> Also is there some document which describes the change to po? As I
> understood in this discussion, there are two po formats (po4a and
> xmlpo or similar) in the loop? I'd prefer to work with sgml/xml if
> possible (thats how I write my (translated) man pages as well).


There are not two formats. The result is mostly the same: you
translate a PO file, not a XML or ROFF file.

I really do *notù recommend using native format when PO is
available. It does not guarantee that the translated man page will
remain accurate.


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