Re: Some questions about plural forms

[Michał Sawicz]

Dnia 2009-05-30, sob o godzinie 01:15 +0200, Bruno Haible pisze:
> > > ngettext("Singular string %(string)s",
> > >          "Plural string for %(digit)d",
> > >          num) % {'string': "string", 'digit': 20}
> 
> It is possible. xgettext extracts a plural message from this without
> problems. But it is bizarre that the 'string' parameter is not used in
> the English plural form.

The usecase is this:

Singular: A plugin "Foo" is to be installed
Plural: 3 plugins are to be installed

I actually walked around this by converting %d to %s and replace %s with
"Foo" or "3" depending on the plugin count

> The error message is slightly wrong. I'm changing it to
>   x.po:24: a format specification for argument 'string', as in 'msgstr[0]', 
> doesn't exist in 'msgid_plural'
> 
> But it highlights nevertheless the inconsistency regarding the 'string'
> argument.

Yes, that was the error POEdit reported.

> POEdit is right. msgid_plural is the general form of the argument list,
> whereas msgid is only a special case.

What's the point in having msgid then, when there's no respective
msgstr? Seems in this case it actually becomes a comment?

> > Also, Pybabel seems to require all msgstr[] to have the same formatting
> > as msgid... This confuses me a lot...
> 
> That seems like an unnecessary restriction. For unnamed arguments, it is
> normal and expected, but for named arguments, the integer argument should
> be omittable, so that translators can use a word instead of a known number.

Yes, based on what you said earlier PyBabel has it wrong.

All in all, from what I understand, msgid itself isn't used at all when
there are plural forms... And that is weird...

Something like this:

> msgid "Singular form for %s"
> msgid_plural "Plural form for %d"
> msgstr "Translated singular form for %s"
> msgstr[1] "Translated plural form for %d"
> msgstr[2] "Translated plural form for %d"
...

is not possible. I understand that, as it could lead to some confusion
sometimes. But a solution IMO would be to allow things like this:

> msgid "Singular form for %s"
> msgid_plural "Plural form for %d"
> msgstr[0] "Translated singular form for %s"
> msgstr[1] "Translated plural form for %d"
> msgstr[2] "Translated plural form for %d"

Where the gettext tool will check Plural-Forms and determine which
msgstr[] refers to singular form and compare its formatting with msgid
instead of msgid_plural.

-- 
Michał Sawicz <address@hidden>