From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Before l10n, better practices for (message) ? Date: Tue, 23 May 2017 21:36:08 +0300 Message-ID: <83zie3mndz.fsf@gnu.org> References: <2623E5C5-4D40-4C9F-BFF6-181D2E69F984@gmail.com> <831srgnuyc.fsf@gnu.org> <6BED2506-B1C2-4005-AFDE-2BF04209F16C@gmail.com> Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1495564604 14024 195.159.176.226 (23 May 2017 18:36:44 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 23 May 2017 18:36:44 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Jean-Christophe Helary Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue May 23 20:36:39 2017 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1dDEfc-0003Mt-QR for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 23 May 2017 20:36:37 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:51001 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dDEff-0001N0-8S for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 23 May 2017 14:36:39 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:36843) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dDEfZ-0001Mk-90 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 23 May 2017 14:36:34 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dDEfT-00016z-RN for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 23 May 2017 14:36:33 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::e]:36581) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1dDEfT-00016l-OF; Tue, 23 May 2017 14:36:27 -0400 Original-Received: from 84.94.185.246.cable.012.net.il ([84.94.185.246]:1459 helo=home-c4e4a596f7) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtpsa (TLS1.2:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:256) (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1dDEfR-0001mb-Qq; Tue, 23 May 2017 14:36:27 -0400 In-reply-to: <6BED2506-B1C2-4005-AFDE-2BF04209F16C@gmail.com> (message from Jean-Christophe Helary on Tue, 23 May 2017 12:38:29 +0900) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 2001:4830:134:3::e X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:215132 Archived-At: > From: Jean-Christophe Helary > Date: Tue, 23 May 2017 12:38:29 +0900 > > > > On May 23, 2017, at 11:55, Eli Zaretskii wrote: > > > >> I'm currently going through package.el and the easiest solution I have for now is replace things like "%d package%s to install" (where %s is "s" depending on whether %d is greater than 1...) into "Number of packages to install: %d.". > > > > Just replace it with 2 different spellings dispatched by the number. > > I know we don't have l10n now, but what you propose is also based on the grammatical assumption that we have only 2 possible forms so I would try to avoid that too. Having 2 forms is as close to the ideal as we can have, given that we don't have infrastructure for more complicated cases. Introducing functions that will meanwhile do nothing non-trivial doesn't sound a good idea to me; such functions will only make sense when they actually support non-trivial plurals (and for that, we need first to figure out how to select the language into which any given message needs to be translated). > > We don't have any mechanisms that I know of, and won't have until the > > large part of the i10n issues is resolved by motivated individuals. > > I guess I just found something to do in the coming months... :) > > What I'll do is propose a patch for package.el that makes UI strings the most linguistically neutral possible (within my understanding of English), and after discussing the changes, if we can use that as a base to create a list of "best practices", I'll use that to check the other packages included in the distribution. I'm not sure package.el is a good starting point. I think a much better starting point is to design the i10n infrastructure for Emacs.