Key bindings

Main window key bindings are as follows:

Edit dialog key bindings are as follows:

In the table above, “current msgstr” refers to the situation when there are multiple msgstrs, representing different plural forms. Only the currently shown plural form is affected.

When the info box is focused, arrow keys, C-B/C-F (PgUp/PgDn) and C-A/C-E (Home/End) keys scroll the info box.

When the search box is open, relevant text editing and movement commands from the edit box also apply. For example, C-R moves one word backwards, and C-W deletes one word backwards.

Status line

Status line is comprised of a number of segments, by default three. The central segment displays the current message number, the total messages count, then in parentheses: number of untranslated messages, number of fuzzy messages and the number of obsolete messages. Obsolete messages are messages whose msgid doesn't match any msgid in the message catalog anymore, and are commented out in the .po file using #~ comments.

Message flags

Message flags are shown to the left of the msgid in the main window and the statusbar of the edit box. They mean the following:

Error checking

poe has some rudimentary checks of the translated messages built in. First, when saving changes in the edit box, if the msgid has a newline character (\n), a dot (.) or a space ( ) at the end, and the corresponding msgstr doesn't, msgstr being saved will have its ending character made to match the one from the msgid. This feature can be disabled by commenting out the MATCH_MSGSTR_ENDING feature flag.

Second, if the numbers of newline characters (\n), or, additionally, dots when WARN_COUNT_DOTS is set, in msgid and msgstr don't match, msgstr will be shown in a different color on the main screen. If the number of newlines was intended, you can simply ignore this warning. Otherwise, it can be useful to detect unwanted discrepancies in formatting between the original message and the translation.

Known limitations

• UTF-8 character set is assumed.
• CJK characters are unsupported/problematic. This is a limitation of termbox library. See https://github.com/nsf/termbox for more details.
• Only one file can be edited at a time, and no additional files can be loaded at runtime. This is a design decision.
• Unless the define CREATE_BACKUPS is commented out before compilation, the directory of the edited file must be writable by the user in order to write the changes to the file. This is due to creating backups in order to avoid the potential data loss under specific circumstances (loss of power during write).
• Only the flags fuzzy, c-format and no-c-format are supported. Other flags will be stripped on save. This is a design decision.