# Welcome to polib’s documentation!

polib is a library to manipulate, create, modify gettext files (pot, po and mo files). You can load existing files, iterate through it’s entries, add, modify entries, comments or metadata, etc. or create new po files from scratch.

polib supports out of the box any version of python ranging from 2.7 to latest 3.X version.

polib is pretty stable now and is used by many opensource projects.

polib is completely free and opensource, the license used is the MIT license. It was developed back in 2006 by David Jean Louis and it is still actively maintained.

To get up and running quickly, consult the quick-start guide, which describes all the necessary steps to install and use polib. For more detailed information about how to install and how to use polib, read through the documentation listed below.

Contents:

- Quick start guide
  - Installing polib
  - Some basics about gettext catalogs
  - Loading existing catalogs
  - Loading a catalog from a string
  - Loading an mo file from a bytes object
  - Creating po catalogs from scratch
  - More examples
- Installation guide
  - Requirements
  - Installing polib
- polib API
  - The `pofile` function
  - The `mofile` function
  - The `detect_encoding` function
  - The `escape` function
  - The `unescape` function
  - The `POFile` class
  - The `MOFile` class
  - The `POEntry` class
  - The `MOEntry` class
- Contributing to polib
  - How to contribute
  - Running the test suite
- Projects using polib