It doesn't destroy it. If it did, you would have to re-translate all strings, every time you update a POT file...
One thing to be careful about is the msgmerge and msgfmt commands. They will destroy your po files if it cannot merge. So I wrote a simple script to "backup" my po file before I merge it. Se below.

The only problem with updating the POT file, is when you update too early (not completely finished release notes). Then translators will translate things that maybe will be deleted in later versions and waste time. So I say, if the doc is almost finished (and only minor fixes are made) then update the POT file as often as possible.

#!/bin/bash
LANG=sv
      echo "kor.."
      cp sv.po sv.po.beforemerge.$RANDOM
      msgmerge sv.po *.pot > tmp.po
      mv tmp.po sv.po
      msgfmt -cvo /dev/null sv.po



On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 10:13 AM, Paul W. Frields <stickster@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Nov 05, 2008 at 11:44:23AM -0300, Domingo Becker wrote:
> 2008/11/5 Paul W. Frields <stickster@gmail.com>:
> > On Wed, Nov 05, 2008 at 11:08:55AM +1000, Noriko Mizumoto wrote:
> >> Hi
> >>
> >> It seems that POT and PO files have now been updated.
> >> This was supposed to happen on 6-Nov, and many of us have not committed
> >> our files yet. We now have to stop working.
> >> http://git.fedoraproject.org/git/?p=docs/release-notes.git;a=summary
> >>
> >> One funny thing to me, the total number of strings decreased to 1024
> >> strings...
> >>
> >> Could someone please let us know what is happening?
> >
> > Noriko,
> >
> > I believe I'm the person who updated the POT, but I thought I was
> > giving translators early content to make sure they were able to work
> > as long as possible on the correct content.
> >
> > Are you saying that updating the POT files destroys your previous
> > work?  I thought that the update would simply mark new strings that
> > have changed a little bit as fuzzy.  Does this really require that
> > work stop?  Don't translators have a way of getting the updates
> > without destroying their existing work?
> >
>
> It seems it does not destroy translations.
> I started translations with an es.po file a week ago, I commited
> translations some hours ago, against the new es.po file with the new
> strings and it seems it does not destroy my work.
> t.fp.o [1] shows for Spanish 341/476/207 (1024 strings) while my
> poEdit shows 353/477/200 (1030 strings). Of course, I have to download
> the new .po file to continue working.

I wonder what will happen when we do the *next* change of the POT and
PO.  I expect that the gettext utils would mark some things fuzzy if
there is a slight change between your work and the new updates.  I
would certainly hope that no work would be completely lost or futile!

--
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
 gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
 http://redhat.com/   -  -  -  -   http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/
 irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug

--
Fedora-trans-list mailing list
Fedora-trans-list@redhat.com
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-trans-list