conversion tool translation tooloriginal file <--------------> po file <----------------> translatorWith this, package maintainers are free to use the format/tools theywant (xml with xml2pot, sgml with po4a, ...); translation teams are freeto use the translation tools they want (text editors, pootle, mail interfaces, ...).
Or XLIFF editors since there is curently a relatively stable po-XLIFF conversion framework being developed.
This does not prevent us to propose translators to get the translation material in whichever format they would like to use....this is what I understand from your above scheme.
But is it necessary to convert all the localisable files to .po ? .po is not a translation memory industry standard. It may work for most of the gettext based localisation process but is not appropriate for "the rest": documentation etc. Because the rest is based on XLIFF (TMX) in the non-gettext world.
Jean-Christophe Helary