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==Summary==

Here [[Internationalization|we]] evaluate various file formats used for the translation of programas. For the moment we are considering:

* XML
* po
* create an own format

==PO Files==

===Format of PO files===

A PO file has an entry for each string that has to be translated. There are two kind of them, a "normal" one and one that involves plural forms.

====Normal entry====

Here is the general structure of a "normal" entry:

 white-space
 #  translator-comments
 #. automatic-comments
 #: reference...
 #, flag...
 msgid untranslated-string
 msgstr translated-string

Where the ''translator-comments'' are created and maintained exclusively by the translator, this comments have some white space immediately following the #. The other comments are created by the program that created the PO file.
After the special comment "#," there can be some ''flags'', as ''fuzzy'' shows that the msgstr string might not be a correct translation, i.e. the translator is not sure of his work.
The 'untranslated-string' is the untranslated string as it appears in the original program source. The ''translated-string'' is (as the name suggests) the translated string, if there is no translation it is an empty string.

====Plural form entry====

 white-space
 #  translator-comments
 #. automatic-comments
 #: reference...
 #, flag...
 msgid untranslated-string-singular
 msgid_plural untranslated-string-plural
 msgstr[0] translated-string-case-0
 ...
 msgstr[N] translated-string-case-n

===Supported character encodings===

character encodings that can be used are limited to those supported by both GNU libc and GNU libiconv. These are: ASCII, ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-2, ISO-8859-3, ISO-8859-4, ISO-8859-5, ISO-8859-6, ISO-8859-7, ISO-8859-8, ISO-8859-9, ISO-8859-13, ISO-8859-15, KOI8-R, KOI8-U, CP850, CP866, CP874, CP932, CP949, CP950, CP1250, CP1251, CP1252, CP1253, CP1254, CP1255, CP1256, CP1257, GB2312, EUC-JP, EUC-KR, EUC-TW, BIG5, BIG5-HKSCS, GBK, GB18030, SHIFT_JIS, JOHAB, TIS-620, VISCII, UTF-8.

I thing they are a lot...

===Positive aspects===

* Powerful plural handling
* Format created for translation purpose
* Easy for humans to read
* Used by gettext, kbabel, rosetta and many other programs

===Negative aspects===

*

==XML==

===Positive aspects===

*

===Negative aspects===

*

==New Format==

===Positive aspects===

*

===Negative aspects===

* A new format? Why should we be different?

==Conclusions==

==References==

* [http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_mono/gettext.html| Gettext manual (for PO files)]

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