Updating PO files

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gmail com>]

Currently, gnome-doc-utils will update PO files whenever the source
XML files change.  Basically, we have this dependancy:

$(_DOC_POFILES): $(_DOC_C_DOCS)

We clearly need a rule for making the PO files, because they have to
be generated from scratch if they don't exist.  Otherwise we get some
bad build breakage.  They do logically depend on $(_DOC_C_DOCS), but
explicitly marking them as such means that the PO files are updated
whenever the source XML files are changed.

Some people, apparently, aren't fond of this behavior.  The PO files
are in CVS, and so editing the source XML means getting a big diff of
PO files in your commit.

With the current setup, though, PO files will be updated, period.
Stuff stays up-to-date.  Sure, new translations aren't automatically
added, but the PO files will always refer to what's in CVS.

Furthermore, translators can create or update their PO files with
the very simple command 'make lang/lang.po' inside the document
directory.  If I removed the $(_DOC_C_DOCS) dependancy, then they'd
need a command like this:

xml2po -e -u lang.po ../C/fe.xml ../C/fi.xml ../C/fo.xml ../C/fum.xml

Making sure to get all the source files listed, and making sure to
use our good friend -e.  That sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

Alternatively, I could make gnome-doc-utils.make output a POTFILES file
listing all the source documents.  It could be made only on request, or
it could be added to all.  Then the translators could just do something
like this:

make POTFILES && xml2po -e -u lang/lang.po `cat POTFILES`

(Except I'm not sure if '-u lang/lang.po' is all right; there used to
be problems doing it that way.)  Obviously, we could easily add stuff
to xml2po to avoid the substitution thing as well.

I'd like to hear people's takes on this issue, especially what Danilo
thinks.

--
Shaun