PO files in RimLoc¶

PO (Portable Object) is one interchange format supported by RimLoc. It is useful with Poedit and many CAT tools, but it is not the canonical RimLoc project format and it is not required for normal desktop translation.

When PO is useful¶

Use PO when you want to:

hand a translation to an external translator/CAT tool;
review a single text-oriented file in Git;
import work produced by an existing gettext-oriented workflow;
keep compatibility with established translation tooling.

If you translate directly in the RimLoc desktop project, you can skip PO entirely.

Basic structure¶

#: path/to/source.xml:42
msgctxt "stable-context"
msgid "Hello, {PAWN_label}!"
msgstr "Привет, {PAWN_label}!"

Keep placeholders/tags intact.

Export¶

rimloc-cli export-po \
  --root ./Mods/MyMod \
  --out-po ./work/MyMod.ru.po \
  --lang ru

Validate¶

rimloc-cli validate-po --po ./work/MyMod.ru.po --strict

Import¶

Always prefer a working copy / isolated output rather than the original Workshop source:

rimloc-cli import-po \
  --po ./work/MyMod.ru.po \
  --mod-root ./work/MyMod-copy \
  --lang ru \
  --dry-run

Build without PO¶

If translated XML already exists:

rimloc-cli build-mod \
  --from-root ./work/MyTranslatedMod \
  --out-mod ./dist/MyTranslatedMod-RU \
  --lang ru \
  --dry-run

So the mental model is:

canonical RimLoc project
        ↕
   import/export adapters
   PO · CSV · XLIFF · XML · ...

not “RimLoc project = PO”.

Editors¶

If you choose the PO path:

Poedit;
Lokalize;
Gtranslator;
gettext CLI tools;
editors with PO extensions.

See also PO export/import and placeholders.