Re: Translation issues with strftime

[Keld Jørn Simonsen <keld dkuug dk>]

On Sun, Dec 07, 2003 at 04:32:25AM +0100, Danilo Segan wrote:
> Keld Jørn Simonsen <keld@dkuug.dk> writes:
> > On Sat, Dec 06, 2003 at 12:06:30PM +0100, Ole Laursen wrote:
> >> 
> >>   mandag, 13. november skrev Zorglub:
> >
> > I would rather like:
> >
> >    mandag den 13. november skrev Zorglub:
> >
> > But both formats should be possible.
> 
> The entire concept of using strftime for formatting sentences like
> this one is broken, AFAICT (some may have noticed that I have stopped
> doing that, and now they know the reason :).
> 
> You mention the problem of capitalisation, but there's much more than
> that: names of months and days are *nouns*, and should go through
> declinations in many languages.
> 
> Yet, I couldn't find any allowance for more than one string in a
> locale for any particular setting (as per ISO 14652 if I remembered
> correctly, thanks, again, Keld for pointing me to that draft).
> 
> So, what is written in a locale definition is nominative, eg.
>  "Today is Saturday"
> 
> In the example of mails, one often likes to do
>  "On Saturday of November 17, Zorglub wrote"
> 
> Roughly translated to Serbian, it would become
>  "U subotu 17. novembra, Zorglub napisa"
>          ^          ^^^
> Yet, nominative for "November" is "novembar", and it would be a major
> PITA if it's stuck there (not to mention that nominative for Saturday
> is "subota" instead of "subotu" :).

Yes, that is something that could be done better.
Any suggestions?

> Though, that "den" in Keld's example looks like a German article to
> me, so perhaps that's also what changes depending on declination
> (e.g. it's "Today is der 13. november", but "On den 13. november").

I do not think that is a problem. The text is something that is in the
string d_t_fmt - not in the definition of the month names them selves.
But maybe you have examples of where it can be a problem.
> 
> >> There's no way to tell strftime that the weekday should be
> >> capitalised.
> >
> > That should also be possible, to say "use capitalization on the first
> > letter". Any suggestions on how it could be done?
> > This should apply to both month names and weekday names, and both
> > abbreviated and long forms. So maybe a general "make it uppercase"
> > flag could be used ("+" maybe?).
> 
> While we're sending our suggestions over here (and while you're
> listening :), how about extending locale definitions to allow more
> than one definition for a string? :)
> 
> So, in LC_TIME instead of 
>  mon     "????????????";"??????????????";"????????";"??????????";...
> 
> I would have a chance to define:
>  num_of_forms 2
>  mon     "????????????"|"??????????????";"??????????????"|"????????????????";"????????"|"??????????";...
> 
> 
> 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.

Yes, something like this could be done.
> 
> I'd love to be able to translate "%B %d" as "%d. %{2}B". :o)
> 
> 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 :).

Yes, this is conceivable, but do you have examples?

Best regards
Keld