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From: Jacob Sparre Andersen <jacob@jacob-sparre.dk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: gettext for Ada
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2017 20:22:43 +0100
Organization: JSA Research & Innovation
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Date: 2017-11-21T20:22:43+01:00
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Shark8 <onewingedshark@gmail.com> writes:

> It's also illustrative of why an actual structured approach to
> messaging would be much better: simple string-formatting of "You have
> %d meats." with 1 (one) yields "You have 1 meats." and thereby
> violates subject-verb agreement (of [non-]plurality). -- The
> structured approach would take things like this into account, as well
> as things like plural-forms and casings and construct a sort of
> "abstract grammar" [or something] which on rendering would yield the
> appropriate and correct forms for the user. -- Again, I haven't heard
> of this being used in many projects... but that's probably due to the
> complex nature of designing the underlying machinery/framework,
> compared to, say, calling "Copied 1 file(s)." a 'good enough'
> solution.

GNU Gettext happens to have a perfectly good solution to this problem.

Would you be able to implement handling of plural forms anywhere nearly
as well as GNU Gettext does it?  For all the languages you might have
users for?

Greetings,

Jacob
-- 
"[C programming] is like playing tennis on a minefield using hand
 grenade for a ball."                          -- Dmitry A. Kazakov