parse => to_text shouldn't change the file

[dfherr]

The parser does not remember linebreakes of multiline msgid's and msgstr's.

well this is a rather big one I didn't really thought about changing, as I use my own methods for writing the method and not to_text. In the process of refactoring I would like to do anything that is about parsing/writing with the gem.

It does not violate the gettext rules to concatenate multiline msgid's or msgstr's, but it causes for example the header to be in one line, which is not desireable.

To keep the multiline presentation while parsing, msgstr and msgid must be represented as a list (array) internally.
I could do this the harsh way which would require a version jump and breaking any existing use of the gem, or the soft way by adding helper methods for msgid/msgstr which return the concatenated version, but keeping lists for their content.

On a plus the second way wouldn't change how the mo/po interface works and wouldn't break existing code. The drawback would be performance and messy logic.

What do you think @grosser ?

[grosser]

Sounds good to me, does not matter if you break stuff, should be easy to adept to ...

[dfherr]

okay fine. this could take a while as it's low prio refactoring, but is definitly on my todo list :)