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Re: Changes in nl_langinfo() and strftime() API in glibc
From: |
Bruno Haible |
Subject: |
Re: Changes in nl_langinfo() and strftime() API in glibc |
Date: |
Thu, 25 Jan 2018 09:10:46 +0100 |
User-agent: |
KMail/5.1.3 (Linux/4.4.0-104-generic; KDE/5.18.0; x86_64; ; ) |
Hi Rafal,
> > "when the month is used as part of a complete date"
> > to
> > "when the month appears together with a day-of-month".
>
> OK, I have posted this suggestion to libc-alpha:
>
> https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2018-01/msg00773.html
Thanks. As Carlos says, the manual can even talk about language specific
things; it already does for the plural forms [1].
> > Ah, but translators will not look in the glibc manual. They read only
> > the gettext manual. So do we need some text in the gettext manual as
> > well?
>
> I'm not sure which gettext manual you are thinking about but
> this gettext manual is actually a part of glibc:
>
> https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/The-Uniforum-approach.html
I meant the GNU gettext manual [2].
> > In other words, is the %B / %OB distinction something that the
> > programmer can do, and the translator is not bothered about it?
>
> I strongly believe that the format strings should be left for
> the translators and the programmer's choice of a format string
> should be correct for English but this is seldom correct for other
> languages. This is not because of the genitive/nominative month
> names but for the reasons like:
>
> - English often uses the month-day order, most of other languages
> use the day-month order;
> - many languages require a dot after the day number;
> - English requires a comma after the day number if it is followed
> by a year number;
> - some languages (e.g., East Asian) do not have month names and
> use the month numbers instead;
> - and many more...
Interesting. Thanks for these thoughts. I have opened a ticket in the
gettext bug tracker to document these things. [3].
Bruno
[1]
https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Advanced-gettext-functions.html
[2] https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/
[3] https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?52971
- Re: Changes in nl_langinfo() and strftime() API in glibc, (continued)
Re: Changes in nl_langinfo() and strftime() API in glibc, Bruno Haible, 2018/01/24