Re: Translation issues with strftime

[Ole Laursen <olau hardworking dk>]

Danilo Segan <danilo@gnome.org> writes:

[...]

> So, in LC_TIME instead of 
>  mon     "јануар";"фебруар";"март";"април";...
>
> I would have a chance to define:
>  num_of_forms 2
>  mon     "јануар"|"јануара";"фебруар"|"фебруара";"март"|"марта";...
>
>
> This would also need extension of strftime syntax, but since the
> number of forms is pretty constant for every language I heard of
> (even if it might be really large -- it's 7 for Serbian), I think
> it's not a big problem.
>
> I'd love to be able to translate "%B %d" as "%d. %{2}B". :o)

Hm, %{2} seems a little fragile? Wouldn't it be difficult to make it
portable? Unless the standard includes a fixed mapping from number to
form, e.g.

  1 -> nominative
  2 -> accusative

> Still, I can imagine that there are languages where even this
> wouldn't be sufficient: they might use some form of article ("die",
> "der",...) and also have different gender for different month names
> (this is just a wild and crazy example which I am not aware of being
> true in any locale :).

Hm, we need an international forum for these kind of discussions. :-)

AFAIK for Danish one only need one form for all uses.


> Actually, this is one major reason I have switched from Gnomeish mail
> clients to Gnus -- I'm planning on hacking my own string for quoting
> mails (didn't get 'round to it yet, but will soon :), which means also
> holding an array of "declinated" month and day names -- not very good,
> since it increases redunancy.

Gnus does have it advantages...

-- 
Ole Laursen
http://www.cs.auc.dk/~olau/