diff --git a/bin/ui-converter-skeleton.py b/bin/ui-converter-skeleton.py
new file mode 100755
index 000000000000..e5b651b089c2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/bin/ui-converter-skeleton.py
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+#!/bin/python
+# -*- tab-width: 4; indent-tabs-mode: nil; py-indent-offset: 4 -*-
+#
+# This file is part of the LibreOffice project.
+#
+# This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public
+# License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this
+# file, You can obtain one at http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/.
+
+# this should parse a .ui and overwrite it with the same content
+# for a in `git ls-files "*.ui"`; do bin/ui-converter-skeleton.py $a; done
+
+import lxml.etree as etree
+import sys
+
+with open(sys.argv[1], encoding="utf-8") as f:
+  header = f.readline()
+  firstline = f.readline()
+  # the comment after the xml declaration goes missing unless we provide a
+  # custom doctype with tostring that contains the comment as a line after
+  # the true doctype
+  if firstline.startswith("<!--"):
+    header = header + firstline
+  f.seek(0)
+  # remove_blank_text so pretty-printed input doesn't disrupt pretty-printed
+  # output if nodes are added or removed
+  parser = etree.XMLParser(remove_blank_text=True)
+  tree = etree.parse(f, parser)
+  # make sure <property name="label" translatable="no"></property> stays like that
+  # and doesn't change to <property name="label" translatable="no"/>
+  for status_elem in tree.xpath("//property[@name='label' and string() = '']"):
+    status_elem.text = ""
+  root = tree.getroot()
+
+# do some targeted conversion here
+
+with open(sys.argv[1], 'wb') as o:
+  # without encoding='unicode' (and the matching encode("utf8")) we get &#XXXX replacements for non-ascii characters
+  # which we don't want to see changed in the output
+  o.write(etree.tostring(root, pretty_print=True, method='xml', encoding='unicode', doctype=header[0:-1]).encode("utf8"))
+
+# vim: set shiftwidth=4 softtabstop=4 expandtab: