# prop2po

Convert between Java property files (.properties) and Gettext PO format.

Note: this tool completely eliminates the need for native2ascii as po2prop does the correct escaping to the Latin1 encoding that is needed by Java.

The following other formats are also supported via the –personality parameter:

- Adobe Flex
- Skype .lang
- Mac OS X .strings
- Mozilla .properties

## Usage

    prop2po [options] <property> <po>
    po2prop [options] -t <template> <po> <property>

Where:

<property> | is a directory containing property files or an individual property file
<po> | is a directory containing PO files and an individual property file
<template> | is a directory of template property files or a single template property file

Options (prop2po):

`--version` | show program’s version number and exit
`-h, --help` | show this help message and exit
`--manpage` | output a manpage based on the help
`--progress=PROGRESS`
| show progress as: dots, none, bar, names, verbose
`--errorlevel=ERRORLEVEL`
| show errorlevel as: none, message, exception, traceback
`-i INPUT, --input=INPUT`
| read from INPUT in properties format
`-x EXCLUDE, --exclude=EXCLUDE`
| exclude names matching EXCLUDE from input paths
`-o OUTPUT, --output=OUTPUT`
| write to OUTPUT in po, pot formats
`-t TEMPLATE, --template=TEMPLATE`
| read from TEMPLATE in properties format
`-S, --timestamp`
| skip conversion if the output file has newer timestamp
`-P, --pot` | output PO Templates (.pot) rather than PO files (.po)
`--personality=TYPE`
| override the input file format: flex, java, mozilla, java-utf8, skype, gaia, strings (for .properties files, default: java)
`--encoding=ENCODING`
| override the encoding set by the personality
`--duplicates=DUPLICATESTYLE`
| what to do with duplicate strings (identical source text): merge, msgctxt (default: ‘msgctxt’)

Options (po2prop):

`--version` | show program’s version number and exit
`-h, --help` | show this help message and exit
`--manpage` | output a manpage based on the help
`--progress=PROGRESS`
| show progress as: dots, none, bar, names, verbose
`--errorlevel=ERRORLEVEL`
| show errorlevel as: none, message, exception, traceback
`-i INPUT, --input=INPUT`
| read from INPUT in po, pot formats
`-x EXCLUDE, --exclude=EXCLUDE`
| exclude names matching EXCLUDE from input paths
`-o OUTPUT, --output=OUTPUT`
| write to OUTPUT in properties format
`-t TEMPLATE, --template=TEMPLATE`
| read from TEMPLATE in properties format
`-S, --timestamp`
| skip conversion if the output file has newer timestamp
`--personality=TYPE`
| override the input file format: flex, java, mozilla, java-utf8, skype, gaia, strings (for .properties files, default: java)
`--encoding=ENCODING`
| override the encoding set by the personality (since 1.8.0)
`--removeuntranslated`
| remove untranslated strings from output
`--threshold=PERCENT`
| only convert files where the translation completion is above PERCENT
`--fuzzy` | use translations marked fuzzy
`--nofuzzy` | don’t use translations marked fuzzy (default)

## Examples

These examples demonstrate most of the useful invocations of prop2po:

### Creating POT files

    prop2po -P properties pot

Extract messages from properties directory and place them in a directory called pot. The `-P` option ensures that we create POT files instead of PO files.:

    prop2po -P file.properties file.pot

Extract messages from file.properties and place them in file.pot.

### Creating PO files from existing work

    prop2po --duplicates=msgctxt -t reference zu zu-po

Extract all existing Zulu messages from zu directory and place the resultant PO files in a directory called zu-po. If you find duplicate messages in a file then use Gettext’s mgsctxt to disambiguate them. During the merge we use the .properties files in reference as templates and as the source of the English text for the msgid. Once you have your PO files you might want to use pomigrate2 to ensure that your PO files match the latest POT files.

### Creating .properties files from your translations

    po2prop -t reference zu-po zu

Using our translations found in zu-po and the templates found in reference we create a new set of property files in zu. These new property files will look exactly like those found in the templates, but with the text changed to the translation. Any fuzzy entry in our PO files will be ignored and any untranslated item will be placed in zu in English. The .properties file created will be based on the Java specification and will thus use escaped Unicode. Where:

    ṽḁḽṻḝ

Will appear in the files as:

    \u1E7D\u1E01\u1E3D\u1E7B\u1E1D

To get output as used by Mozilla localisation do the following:

    po2prop --personality=mozilla -t reference zu-po zu

This will do exactly the same as above except that the output will now appear as real Unicode characters in UTF-8 encoding.

## Doing away with native2ascii

The native2ascii command is the traditional tool of property file localisers. With prop2po there is no need to use this command or to ever work directly with the escaped Unicode.

If you are working mostly with Gettext PO files then this is a double benefit as you can now use your favourite PO editor to translate Java applications. Your process would now look like this:

    prop2po some.properties some.po

Firstly create a PO file that you can translate. Now translate it in your favourite PO editor.:

    po2prop -t some.properties some.po some-other.properties

Using the original properties file as a template we preserve all layout and comments, combined with your PO translation we create a new translate properties file. During this whole process we have not needed to understand or process any escaping prop2po and po2prop handle that all automatically.

If you have existing translations you can recover them as follows:

    prop2po -t some.properties translations.properties translations.po

This takes the default English properties file and combines it with your translate properties file and created a PO file. You now continue translating using your PO file.