INTLTOOL-PREPARE(8)					      System Manager's Manual					       INTLTOOL-PREPARE(8)

NAME

       intltool-prepare - Prepare software to make use of intltool

SYNOPSIS

       intltool-prepare [option] [KEYWORD]...

DESCRIPTION

       For  software  packages	that  include  some specific type of translatable files (such as .desktop and .soundlist), before they make use of
       intltool, translators have to dig through them one by one, and add their localization into each file. This process is  error  prone,  since
       translators  may  include  typing  errors, or add their localization in wrong encoding. Besides, translators may not alwas know other files
       (beside .po files) are translatable.

       intltool avoids all the problems above by extracting strings inside those translatable files into po template (.pot) file. All  translators
       need to care about is just translating po files. Afterwards, intltool-merge(8) will merge localized strings into those files.

       Before  your  software  becomes intltool-aware, a few issues have to be sorted out, and intltool-prepare tries to take care of all of them.
       intltool-prepare will:

       o Extract all localized strings in .desktop style files (including ".desktop", ".soundlist", ".keys" and ".directory")  into  corresponding
	 po files.

       o Convert the translatable files into templates that don't contain any localization.

       o Add the list of template files above into POTFILES.in.

       o Add the list of old translatable files into .cvsignore (since they will be generated by intltool later).

       o Add the rules for generating these files into Makefile.am.

       NOTE: You must change working directory to the top level source directory before running intltool-prepare.

OPTIONS

       KEYWORD is a list of additional keywords beside "Name", "Comment" and "description". intltool-prepare will recognize any line starting with
       those KEYWORD and extract localized strings after equal sign ("=").

       -x
       --verbose
	   Be verbose to give user additional feedback.

       -v
       --version
	   Show version information.
       -h
       --help
	   Show usage and basic help information.

REPORTING BUGS

       Report bugs to http://bugs.launchpad.net/intltool

AUTHOR

       Darin Adler <darin@bentspoon.com>
       Kenneth Christiansen <kenneth@gnu.org>
       Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@eazel.com>

SEE ALSO

       intltoolize(8), intltool-update(8), intltool-extract(8), intltool-merge(8)

intltool							    2003-08-02						       INTLTOOL-PREPARE(8)