# potools

**Repository Path**: mirrors_mozilla/potools

## Basic Information

- **Project Name**: potools
- **Description**: Debug tools for po files
- **Primary Language**: Unknown
- **License**: MPL-2.0
- **Default Branch**: master
- **Homepage**: None
- **GVP Project**: No

## Statistics

- **Stars**: 0
- **Forks**: 0
- **Created**: 2020-08-22
- **Last Updated**: 2026-03-07

## Categories & Tags

**Categories**: Uncategorized

**Tags**: None

## README

 [![No Maintenance Intended](http://unmaintained.tech/badge.svg)](http://unmaintained.tech/)

# Potools

[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/mozilla/potools.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/mozilla/potools)
[![npm version](https://badge.fury.io/js/potools.svg)](https://badge.fury.io/js/potools)
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A simple CLI utility to provide assistance with po-file based translations

## Installation

To install globally use:

`yarn global add potools` or `npm install -g potools`

If you prefer to install this as a project dep then use:

`yarn add potools --dev` or `npm install --save-dev potools`

The command will be found in `node_modules/.bin/potools`.

## Commands

### debug

This command helps write out debug versions of pofile contents. It is both HTML
and placeholder aware.

```
potools debug <potfile> [output] [format]

Options:
  --help    Show help                                                  [boolean]
  --format  The output format.
                             [choices: "unicode", "mirror"] [default: "unicode"]
  --output  Output path. If not provided outputs to stdout   [default: "stdout"]
```

#### Output Formats

There are two formats you can use:

* `unicode`: converts input to use unicode characters.
* `mirror`: converts input to use mirrored characters (recommended to be used via an RTL locale).

#### Placeholder Support

The debug command handles the following placeholder styles:

* `%(placeholder)s`
* `%(placeholder)d`
* `%s`
* `%d`
* `{placeholder}`

See caveats for special handling of named placeholders for HTML substitution in the mirror format output.

#### Debug Examples:

```
potools debug ../bar/locale/templates/LC_MESSAGES/messages.pot
```

Will output to stdout in unicode format.

```
potools debug ../bar/locale/templates/LC_MESSAGES/messages.pot --format mirror
```

Will output to stdout in mirror format.

```
potools debug ../bar/locale/templates/LC_MESSAGES/messages.pot --format mirror --output ../test.txt
```

Will write the ouptut to `../test.txt`.

#### Debug command caveats 

The RTL debug locale generation (`--format mirror`) generally inverts input to emulate what an RTL translation will look like. 
It will also handle HTML by reversing parts of HTML AST during processing in order to keep a sane order of elements 
but reverse the order of text and HTML.

E.g: `foo <a href="#whatevs">bar <span>test</span></a>` becomes `<a href="#whatevs"><span>ʇsǝʇ</span> ɹɐq</a> ooɟ`.

When placeholders are used to substitute HTML, this will cause problems if the placeholders are inverted. To fix this placeholders that are prefixed with `start` or `end` and have a matching suffix will remain in their original placement 
order.

E.g: `foo %(startSpan)sbar%(endSpan)s` will become `%(startSpan)sɹɐq%(endSpan)s ooɟ` to preserve order.

## Development

### Requirements

* git
* Node6+
* yarn (npm can be used in place of this if you prefer).

To get started first fork and clone this repo. 
Then run `yarn install` (`or npm install`) to install the dependencies.

### Testing

To run the tests there are various commands:

* `yarn test` or `npm test`: Runs the lint + tests
* `yarn test-coverage` or `npm run test-coverage`: runs the tests with coverage
* `yarn test-watch` or `npm run test-watch`: runs the tests with a watcher.