Re: Emacs i18n

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

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  > Russian has three plural forms useful for translating a string that formats an 
  > integer N. One form is for when (N%10 == 1 && N%100/10 != 1), one is for when (2 
  > <= N%10 && N%10 <= 4 && N%100/10 == 1), and one is for everything else. So the 
  > form depends on N, not on whether the translation of the word "items" is 
  > masculine or feminine or whatever.

I know that.  That is the problem I addressed.

Each clause inside numeric-select tests for and handles certain numbers.
The first thing in the clause is a condition that tests the number.
If the condition is a number, it matches only that number.

'russian-masc' tests for numbers that require a masculine noun ending;
you use it with a string that contains the masculine ending.

'russian-fem' tests for numbers that require a feminine noun ending.
you use it with a string that contains the feminine ending.

'russian-neut' tests for numbers that require a neuter noun ending.
you use it with a string that contains the neuter ending.

Since I do not speak Russian, I wrote dummies for those endings:
-m, -f and -n.

Thus,

  (numeric-case NUMBER
      (russian-masc "%d-m frobs")
      (russian-fem "%d-f frobs")
      (russian-neut "%d-n frobs"))

Do you follow, now?

  > "Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; plural=(n%10==1 && n%100!=11 ? 0 : n%10>=2 && n%10<=4 
  > && (n%100<10 || n%100>=20) ? 1 : 2);\n"
  > ...
  > #: src/dd.c:822
  > #, c-format
  > msgid "%<PRIuMAX> byte copied, %s, %s"
  > msgid_plural "%<PRIuMAX> bytes copied, %s, %s"

It would be better if we can define these criteria just once, rather
than restate them in many places.  My idea is to incorporate it
into the definition of the conditionals, russian-masc etc.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)