Re: Emacs i18n

[Juri Linkov <juri@linkov.net>]

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>>> Please note that you have to handle not only format-strings of
>>> ‘message’, but also ‘error’ and even more low-level ‘format’, i.e. all
>>> these (error STRING &rest ARGS) (message FORMAT-STRING &rest ARGS)
>>> (format-message STRING &rest OBJECTS) (format STRING &rest OBJECTS)
>>>
>> I expect that 'format' won't translate its first argument, whereas
>> 'error', 'message', and 'format-message' will. This will be for the same
>> reason that 'format' does not translate quotes.
>
> Then it should be sufficient to add a gettext call to 'format-message' only,
> because all other related functions 'message', 'error', 'tramp-message',
> 'tramp-error', etc. all they use 'format-message' directly or indirectly.

Maybe I'm too stupid to comprehend the complexity of this task in its entirety,
but I tried to install gettext infrastructure in Emacs with gettextize,
and then tried to run xgettext on source code, and see no technical problems.
What I tried is to run this command, and it extracts all messages:

  xgettext --from-code=UTF-8 -kformat-message -kmessage -kerror -ktramp-message -ktramp-error *.el

then this command extracts all Gnus messages into a separate file:

  xgettext --from-code=UTF-8 -kformat-message -kmessage -kerror gnus/*.el -o gnus_messages.po

this command extracts all menu items:

  xgettext --from-code=UTF-8 -kmenu-item *.el **/*.el -o menus.po

and this extracts all docstrings:

  xgettext --from-code=UTF-8 -kdefcustom:3 -kdefvar:3 -kdefun:3 *.el **/*.el -o docstrings.po

The size of docstrings.po is about 9MB, so perhaps it should reside in
a separate catalog defined by e.g.

  (defdomain emacs-docstrings

with semantics similar to defgroup, but I have no opinion about this.

I think this project urgently needs a coordinator: to negotiate with
package authors and translation teams about how to better split
translations to message catalogs.  So there are not so much technical
problems, but mostly organizational ones.

> IIUC, using standard gettext functions this would rather correspond to
>
>   (message (ngettext "Replaced %1$d occurrence%s"
>                      "Replaced %1$d occurrences%s"
>                      replace-count)

It seems better to start with this standard function
and add more optimizations like ‘nmessage’ later.

Other Lisp implementations use ‘ngettext’ as well, e.g.:
https://clisp.sourceforge.io/impnotes.html#ggettext

So I'm going to start with more obvious parts of the task
by fixing the current bugs of incorrect English syntax
in a forward-compatible way:


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diff --git a/lisp/subr.el b/lisp/subr.el
index 6c0ad00afa..1f000f77ad 100644
--- a/lisp/subr.el
+++ b/lisp/subr.el
@@ -342,6 +342,13 @@ define-error
          (delete-dups (copy-sequence (cons name conditions))))
     (when message (put name 'error-message message))))
 
+(defun ngettext (msgid msgid_plural n &optional _domain _category)
+  "Return the plural form of the translation for of MSGID and N.
+In the given DOMAIN, depending on the given CATEGORY.  MSGID and
+MSGID_PLURAL should be ASCII strings, and are normally the English singular
+and English plural variant of the message, respectively."
+  (if (/= n 1) msgid_plural msgid))
+
 ;; We put this here instead of in frame.el so that it's defined even on
 ;; systems where frame.el isn't loaded.
 (defun frame-configuration-p (object)
diff --git a/lisp/progmodes/grep.el b/lisp/progmodes/grep.el
index a5427dd8b7..c0f47159c9 100644
--- a/lisp/progmodes/grep.el
+++ b/lisp/progmodes/grep.el
@@ -459,7 +459,7 @@ grep-mode-font-lock-keywords
      ;; remove match from grep-regexp-alist before fontifying
      ("^Grep[/a-zA-Z]* started.*"
       (0 '(face nil compilation-message nil help-echo nil mouse-face nil) t))
-     ("^Grep[/a-zA-Z]* finished with \\(?:\\(\\(?:[0-9]+ \\)?matches found\\)\\|\\(no matches found\\)\\).*"
+     ("^Grep[/a-zA-Z]* finished with \\(?:\\(\\(?:[0-9]+ \\)?match\\(?:es\\)? found\\)\\|\\(no matches found\\)\\).*"
       (0 '(face nil compilation-message nil help-echo nil mouse-face nil) t)
       (1 compilation-info-face nil t)
       (2 compilation-warning-face nil t))
@@ -552,7 +552,10 @@ grep-exit-message
       ;; so the buffer is still unmodified if there is no output.
       (cond ((and (zerop code) (buffer-modified-p))
 	     (if (> grep-num-matches-found 0)
-                 (cons (format "finished with %d matches found\n" grep-num-matches-found)
+                 (cons (format (ngettext "finished with %d match found\n"
+                                         "finished with %d matches found\n"
+                                         grep-num-matches-found)
+                               grep-num-matches-found)
                        "matched")
                '("finished with matches found\n" . "matched")))
 	    ((not (buffer-modified-p))
diff --git a/lisp/replace.el b/lisp/replace.el
index 59ad1a375b..318a9fb025 100644
--- a/lisp/replace.el
+++ b/lisp/replace.el
@@ -983,7 +983,10 @@ flush-lines
 		       (progn (forward-line 1) (point)))
         (setq count (1+ count))))
     (set-marker rend nil)
-    (when interactive (message "Deleted %d matching lines" count))
+    (when interactive (message (ngettext "Deleted %d matching line"
+					 "Deleted %d matching lines"
+					 count)
+			       count))
     count))
 
 (defun how-many (regexp &optional rstart rend interactive)
@@ -1032,9 +1035,10 @@ how-many
 	(if (= opoint (point))
 	    (forward-char 1)
 	  (setq count (1+ count))))
-      (when interactive (message "%d occurrence%s"
-				 count
-				 (if (= count 1) "" "s")))
+      (when interactive (message (ngettext "%d occurrence"
+					   "%d occurrences"
+					   count)
+				 count))
       count)))
 
 \f
@@ -1617,11 +1621,12 @@ occur-1
 		  (not (eq occur-excluded-properties t))))))
 	  (let* ((bufcount (length active-bufs))
 		 (diff (- (length bufs) bufcount)))
-	    (message "Searched %d buffer%s%s; %s match%s%s"
-		     bufcount (if (= bufcount 1) "" "s")
+	    (message "Searched %d %s%s; %s %s%s"
+		     bufcount
+		     (ngettext "buffer" "buffers" bufcount)
 		     (if (zerop diff) "" (format " (%d killed)" diff))
 		     (if (zerop count) "no" (format "%d" count))
-		     (if (= count 1) "" "es")
+		     (ngettext "match" "matches" count)
 		     ;; Don't display regexp if with remaining text
 		     ;; it is longer than window-width.
 		     (if (> (+ (length (or (get-text-property 0 'isearch-string regexp)
@@ -1856,14 +1861,15 @@ occur-engine
 		  (let ((beg (point))
 		        end)
 		    (insert (propertize
-			     (format "%d match%s%s%s in buffer: %s%s\n"
-				     matches (if (= matches 1) "" "es")
+			     (format "%d %s%s%s in buffer: %s%s\n"
+				     matches
+				     (ngettext "match" "matches" matches)
 				     ;; Don't display the same number of lines
 				     ;; and matches in case of 1 match per line.
 				     (if (= lines matches)
-				         "" (format " in %d line%s"
+				         "" (format " in %d %s"
 						    lines
-						    (if (= lines 1) "" "s")))
+						    (ngettext "line" "lines" lines)))
 				     ;; Don't display regexp for multi-buffer.
 				     (if (> (length buffers) 1)
 				         "" (occur-regexp-descr regexp))
@@ -1889,13 +1895,15 @@ occur-engine
 	(goto-char (point-min))
 	(let ((beg (point))
 	      end)
-	  (insert (format "%d match%s%s total%s:\n"
-			  global-matches (if (= global-matches 1) "" "es")
+	  (insert (format "%d %s%s total%s:\n"
+			  global-matches
+			  (ngettext "match" "matches" global-matches)
 			  ;; Don't display the same number of lines
 			  ;; and matches in case of 1 match per line.
 			  (if (= global-lines global-matches)
-			      "" (format " in %d line%s"
-					 global-lines (if (= global-lines 1) "" "s")))
+			      "" (format " in %d %s"
+					 global-lines
+					 (ngettext "line" "lines" global-lines)))
 			  (occur-regexp-descr regexp)))
 	  (setq end (point))
 	  (when title-face
@@ -2730,10 +2738,10 @@ perform-replace
                                            (1+ num-replacements))))))
                              (when (and (eq def 'undo-all)
                                         (null (zerop num-replacements)))
-                               (message "Undid %d %s" num-replacements
-                                        (if (= num-replacements 1)
-                                            "replacement"
-                                          "replacements"))
+                               (message (ngettext "Undid %d replacement"
+                                                  "Undid %d replacements"
+                                                  num-replacements)
+                                        num-replacements)
                                (ding 'no-terminate)
                                (sit-for 1)))
 			   (setq replaced nil last-was-undo t last-was-act-and-show nil)))
@@ -2859,9 +2867,10 @@ perform-replace
                       last-was-act-and-show     nil))))))
       (replace-dehighlight))
     (or unread-command-events
-	(message "Replaced %d occurrence%s%s"
+	(message (ngettext "Replaced %d occurrence%s"
+			   "Replaced %d occurrences%s"
+			   replace-count)
 		 replace-count
-		 (if (= replace-count 1) "" "s")
 		 (if (> (+ skip-read-only-count
 			   skip-filtered-count
 			   skip-invisible-count)