[bug-gettext] unclear basic functionality

[Thomas Wolff]

Hi,
checking to use gettext-formatted I18N in my project,
I ran into a number of basic issues:


For the following source
    gettext("test line 1\ntest line 2")
I would expect
msgid "test line 1\ntest line 2"
but xgettext (0.19.7 on cygwin) generates
msgid ""
"test line 1\n"
"test line 2"

With option --stringtable-output, this works fine.


For the following source
_("test_")
xgettext produces nothing by default; -k_ works, but Google finds
--flag=_:1:pass-c-format which does not work.
Since _() seems to be quite popular, maybe it should be handled by default, or better documented?


Option --omit-header implies failure on non-ASCII characters despite proper option --from-code.


If source messages (msgids) are changed, this will produce inconsistencies with existing translations.
Is there any tool that at least detects such changes, or even updates .po files?


Thanks and kind regards,
Thomas