initial .po file with correct plural forms

[Jens A. Tkotz]

Hello,

my name is Jens Tkotz and i am developer in the project "Gallery"
http://gallery.sf.net/

We use gettext and ngettext within php to show translated pages.

With this line we create the initial messages.po file:

xgettext --files-from=filelist-core -LPHP --keyword=_ --no-wrap

In the header we get:
"Plural-Forms: nplurals=INTEGER; plural=EXPRESSION;\n"

And at places where we use ngettext we get for example:
#, php-format
msgid "one page"
msgid_plural "%d pages"
msgstr[0] ""
msgstr[1] ""

Problem:

We have languages with different plural definitions. Like turkish or russian.
So we would only need msgstr[0] or additional msgstr[3] and msgstr[4]
We were not able to modify this automatically and have to add/remove those
entries manually.

Question:

How can we initially create a .po file with correct plural forms ?
Or how can we modify existing files autmatically according to plural definition.



Regards,

Jens Tkotz

P.S.: I hope you understand what i mean, i am german and my english is not the
best.