Formatting lists of things

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

I've run into a localization issue in formatting DocBook,
and I need some input from translators to decide how best
to solve it.  Let's say I have a list of people's names.
There could be any number of people.  I need to format
this as inline text.  So in English, I'd do:

  Tom and Dick
  Tom, Dick, and Harry
  Tom, Dick, Harry, and Sally

The names, of course, don't get translated, but the
commas and "and" should be.  So again, this time with
parentheses around the potentially translatable parts:

  Tom( and ) Dick
  Tom(, )Dick(, and )Harry
  Tom(, )Dick(, )Harry(, and )Sally

If every language works exactly like English, then I
can just mark three strings for translation: ", ",
" and ", and ", and ".  But my guess is that they
aren't all like English.

So translators, please let me know hows lists of
things are formatted in your language, including
instructions on exceptions (i.e. in English, two
elements are formatted differently than three or
more, as above).

--
Shaun