intltool: Would check_po.pl be useful?

Binary package hint: intltool

Pidgin has a script named check_po.pl. I'm submitting it here in case it'd be
useful as part of the intltool suite. I'll upload it as an attachment once this
bug is created.

One of our translators said:

I think "msgfmt -c" only finds hard errors in .po files. In most cases,
the "msgfmt -c" errors prevent the compilation, if they are not fixed:

An example:

    #: ../src/ft.c:442
    #, c-format
    msgid "%s is not a valid filename.\n"
    msgstr "%s ist kein gültiger Dateiname."

Because of the missing line ending ("\n") the file can not be compiled.

    $ msgfmt -c de.po
    de.po:2121: `msgid' and `msgstr' entries do not both end with '\n'
    msgfmt: found 1 fatal error

    $ make
    file=`echo de | sed 's,.*/,,'`.gmo && rm -f $file &&
    /usr/bin/msgfmt -o $file de.po
    de.po:2121: `msgid' and `msgstr' entries do not both end with '\n'
    /usr/bin/msgfmt: found 1 fatal error
    *** Error code 1

check_po.pl is more a "lint" tool for gettext. It finds very much
possible problems in .po files (from check_po.pl):

    # Various checks on po file translations:
    # - printf-style format strings;
    # - differences in trailing newlines;
    # - empty (non-fuzzy) msgid;
    # - likely whitespace errors on joining multi-line entries
    # Ignores all fuzzy entries.
    #
    # Options:
    # -x Don't do standard checks above (eg, just check one of below).
    # -n Check newlines within strings; ie, that have equal numbers
    # of newlines in msgstr and msgid. (Optional because this may
    # happen legitimately.)
    # -w Check leading whitespace. Sometimes whitespace is simply
    # spacing (eg, for widget labels etc), or punctuation differences,
    # so this may be ok.
    # -W Check trailing whitespace. See -w above.
    # -p Check trailing punctuation.
    # -c Check capitalization of first non-whitespace character
    # (only if [a-zA-Z]).
    # -e Check on empty (c.q. new) msgstr

I use both tools with the following options:

msgfmt:

    $ LANG=C msgfmt --check --check-accelerators=_ -c de.po

This does the standard checks (-c|--check) and also checks presence of
keyboard accelerators for menu items.

check_po.pl:

    ./check_po.pl -xnwWpce de.po

This does not do the standard checks (because I don't want to see all
the "*** Possible non-whitespace line-join problem in msgstr" warnings -
I think this are false-positives). But it checks for other problems like
different trailung punctuations. See above for the meanings of the other
switches.