Re: Proposal for declinations in gettext

[Danilo Segan <dsegan gmx net>]

Martin v. Löwis wrote:

>Edward H Trager <ehtrager@umich.edu> writes:
>
>  
>
>>>The good side of this approach (the syntactic elements are arbitrary,
>>>don't comment on those) is that programs that use gettext for l10n would
>>>need no change: everything would be done on the gettext library side and
>>>by translators (it's even better than plural-forms in that manner). Of
>>>course, care should be taken to allow also combination of these and
>>>plural forms, as in:
>>>      
>>>
>>>msgid "king"
>>>msgid_plural "kings"
>>>msgstr[0]<0> "kralj"
>>>msgstr[0]<5> "kraljem"
>>>msgstr[2]<0> "kraljevi"
>>>msgstr[2]<5> "kraljevima"
>>>      
>>>
>
>The problem seems obvious to me: It is plain incorrect that "king" is
>a separate msgid, if it is meant to be pasted in different
>contexts. Instead, it should be added into any context where it is
>meant to be pasted into, forming separate msgids.
>  
>
Yes, this solution is already proposed by Miloslav Trmac (see his 
messages in archives on this issue; generally, he's proposing "context 
markers" to differentiate between strings and their uses). 
Unfortunately, it's a fix that would work only for future programs which 
we're planning, or planning to update with localization support, but it 
wouldn't work for programs currently in existence (it would work, but 
they would require changes).

>Telling apart declinations might be insufficient, because some
>languages may need changes to verbs, too, depending on whether it is
>"king" or "queen" that is being "move"d.
>  
>
Of course, I am aware that the proposed "solution" cannot handle all the 
complexity of natural languages. I am not claiming it to support all 
languages, but I am interested in hearing what languages it can and what 
it cannot handle.

Still, it seems that this proposal is generally regarded as a Bad Thing 
because it solves only part of the problem, thereby helping some, but at 
the same time limiting others (because, as Veronica Loell stressed, this 
would encourage programmers to compose strings in bad ways).

I have no problem with that, and I am thankful to anyone who expressed 
their thoughts and concerns. Thanks.

Cheers,
Danilo