angle brackets in po files

[Ian Jackson <ian@davenant.greenend.org.uk>]

One of the things I had to do to get 1.15.0 to build was this:

diff --git a/man/po/sv.po b/man/po/sv.po$
index 080fe29..e6c9583 100644$
--- a/man/po/sv.po$
+++ b/man/po/sv.po$
@@ -11631,7 +11631,7 @@ msgstr ""$
-"kommandot (I<anvM-CM-$ndare>B<:>I<grupp). Om du anger en anvM-CM-$ndare utan att "$
+"kommandot (I<anvM-CM-$ndare>B<:>I<grupp>). Om du anger en anvM-CM-$ndare utan att "$

Now it is definitely the case that the old text was wrong and the new
text was correct.

But is it really true that mismatched angle brackets aren't allowed in
po files ?  I got an error complaining about the mismatch from an i18n
processor.  (Sadly I forgot to keep a copy of the error mesage.)

Are angle brackets syntactic somehow ?  If so why are they being used
freely as textual things here ?

Ian.