Workspace numbers

[Thomas Thurman <tthurman gnome org>]

Some background: Metacity allows you to have various numbers of 
workspaces (between 1 and 36) and to give names to each of these workspaces.

If you don't give a name to a workspace, Metacity looks up
  "Workspace %d"
in the translation, replaces %d with the workspace number, and uses that 
instead.

However, when you go to the window menu and choose "Move to other 
workspace", we need to insert underscores into the strings (to mark the 
accelerators).  The way we do this currently for each workspace name is 
this: we check whether the workspace name matches
  "Workplace %d"
from the translation, where %d can be any number (not necessarily the 
number of that workspace).

If it IS, we replace it with
  "Workspace %s%d"
from the translation, where %s is either an underscore (if %d is 
less than ten) or the empty string (if %d is greater than ten). HOWEVER, 
in the case where %d is exactly ten, we use
  "Workspace 1_0"
from the translation.

If it ISN'T (this can only happen when they've renamed a workspace, and 
is the most common such case) , we merely add an underscore before the 
first digit, and if there are no digits, we add (_<n>) where <n> is the 
index of the workspace.

Now,

a) This gives translators three strings to translate for approximately 
the same function. So here's what I'd like to know from the translators: 
would it be possible or desirable if we had a single string "Workspace 
%d" where:

1. The %d would be replaced by index numbers to generate default 
workspace names (I hope so, because this is what we do now);
2. The %d would be replaced by "_<number>" for menu options for the 
first to ninth workspaces;
3. The %d would be replaced by "1_0" to generate a menu option for the 
tenth workspace (i.e. the zero would be the accelerator);
4. The %d would be replaced by the plain decimal number otherwise.

b) How do languages which don't use "0" to "9" for their digits deal 
with "%d" in gettext, anyway?  Assuming it works properly in general, I 
assume it would mean we couldn't do the third point above and everyone 
would have to translate "Workspace 1_0" separately.

c) Someone has complained that it's unclear under these rules what 
should happen when a workspace is called "Workspace 10 is a very nice 
workspace" (see bug 453678 for details, not that they're important).  I 
thought I could treat this as a special case of "Workspace 10", but now 
I'm thinking that's just silly and there's no way that's ever going to 
be translatable in the general case.

Thomas

-- 
Thomas Thurman, tthurman at gnome, http://blogs.gnome.org/tthurman
You've already done enough damage!