Re: Before l10n, better practices for (message) ?

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@gmail.com>
> Date: Tue, 23 May 2017 10:18:46 +0900
> 
> > I proposed to add a simple function `string-plural-s' to standarize those
> > plurarizations.
> 
> Yes, but no.
> 
> As a person who pays his bills doing translation and l10n, I would *never* recommend to create UI strings programatically based on *grammatical* assumptions. In fact I would forbid that if I could :) And I think that should be an Emacs policy for all UI strings...

Right.

> 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.
Using the likes of package%s is frowned upon from the translations
POV, exactly as replacing "ing" with "ed".

> So, as I just wrote, I'm working on package.el right now and I'll submit a patch, and when I'm done, I'd like to see what kind of mechanisms we have (or we need to create) to extract strings and use localized ressources.

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.
So for now let's fix this bug in the most direct and "unclever" way we
know of.

Thanks.