---
name: "po4a-updatepo"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "po4a"
version: "0.42-1"
release: "Debian 7 (Wheezy)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/po4a-updatepo"
---

# po4a-updatepo(1)

update the translation (in PO format) of documentation

## NAME

po4a-updatepo - update the translation (in PO format) of documentation

## SYNOPSIS

**po4a-updatepo** **-f** *fmt* (**-m** *master.docE*)+ (**-p** *XX.po*)+

(*XX.po* are the outputs, all others are inputs)

## DESCRIPTION

The po4a (PO for anything) project goal is to ease translations (and more interestingly, the maintenance of translations) using gettext tools on areas where they were not expected like documentation.

The **po4a-updatepo** script is in charge of updating PO files to make them reflect the changes made to the original documentation file. For that, it converts the documentation file to a POT file, and call [*msgmerge*(1)](/msgmerge/1.md) on this new POT and on the provided PO files.

It is possible to give more than one PO file (if you want to update several languages at once), and several documentation files (if you want to store the translations of several documents in the same PO file).

If the master document has non-ASCII characters, it will convert the PO files to UTF-8 (if they weren't already), in order to allow non-standard characters in a culture independent way.

## OPTIONS

- **-f**, **--format**

  Format of the documentation you want to handle. Use the **--help-format** option to see the list of available formats.

- **-m**, **--master**

  File(s) containing the master document to translate.

- **-M**, **--master-charset**

  Charset of the files containing the document to translate. Note that all files must have the same charset.

- **-p**, **--po**

  PO file(s) to update. If these files do not exist, they are created by **po4a-updatepo**.

- **-o**, **--option**

  Extra option(s) to pass to the format plugin and other po4a internal module. Specify each option in the '*name***=***value*' format. See the documentation of each plugin for more information about the valid options and their meanings.

- **--no-previous**

  This option removes **--previous** from the options passed to **msgmerge**. This permits to support versions of **gettext** earlier than 0.16.

- **--previous**

  This option adds **--previous** to the options passed to **msgmerge**. It requires **gettext** 0.16 or later, and is activated by default.

- **--msgmerge-opt** *options*

  Extra options for **msgmerge**.

- **-h**, **--help**

  Show a short help message.

- **--help-format**

  List the documentation formats understood by po4a.

- **-V**, **--version**

  Display the version of the script and exit.

- **-v**, **--verbose**

  Increase the verbosity of the program.

- **-d**, **--debug**

  Output some debugging information.

- **--msgid-bugs-address** *email@address*

  Set the report address for msgid bugs. By default, the created POT files have no Report-Msgid-Bugs-To fields.

- **--copyright-holder** *string*

  Set the copyright holder in the POT header. The default value is "Free Software Foundation, Inc."

- **--package-name** *string*

  Set the package name for the POT header. The default is "PACKAGE".

- **--package-version** *string*

  Set the package version for the POT header. The default is "VERSION".

## SEE ALSO

[*po4a-gettextize*(1)](/po4a-gettextize/1.md), [*po4a-normalize*(1)](/po4a-normalize/1.md), [*po4a-translate*(1)](/po4a-translate/1.md), [*po4a*(7)](/po4a/7.md)

## AUTHORS

```
 Denis Barbier <barbier@linuxfr.org>
 Nicolas Francois <nicolas.francois@centraliens.net>
 Martin Quinson (mquinson#debian.org)
```

## COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright 2002-2012 by SPI, inc.

This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of GPL (see the COPYING file).