Using plurals without ngettext

[Gabor Kelemen <kelemeng gnome hu>]

Hi

In bug #552419[1], I complained against the usage of plurals without
ngettext. This is indeed a corner case, as the program does not expose
the exact number, only differentiates between "one" and "more than one".

Now, a developer asked why is this a problem, and I couldn't tell
exactly what's wrong with this - the wiki[2] is not giving any real
world example, it's only my feeling that it's not correct.

So basically, I'm asking for a new section added to the wiki page, which
shows to developers, why is using plurals without ngettext a bad
practice, even when the exact number of items is not shown.

As I'm thinking on this, the following came in my mind: if we don't show
the number, is it necessary to show different plural forms depending on
the number? The user could then have a clue that this number is in the
range of [...] or [...] - depending the used plural, but this is
irrelevant, as the exact number of things is not shown. So perhaps it's
not that stupid idea to use this programmatic construct? What are other
teams with more than two plurals doing with strings that don't contain
the number, only the singular/plural difference?

Regards
Gabor Kelemen

[1]: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=552419
[2]: http://live.gnome.org/TranslationProject/DevGuidelines/Plurals