Text domain management

Different text domains are basically different po files. Usually, one application uses one text domain, but often, several applications share one text domain. Sometimes it is necessary to use an extra text domain for a special purpose.

As a project leader, it is important to know, that you can always easily split a project into two parts. The key is to create two template files instead of one. Just merge the old translation file with the new templates, and you have two new, smaller translation files.

It is a bit trickier to assemble two smaller subprojects into one big translation project with just one file. There might be messages, that were translated differently in the two projects, and this has to be taken care of. Several tools can assemble two po files, and these include msgcat and msghack. See the appendix called GNU Command-line tools reference> for more information.