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Message-ID: <90e87abcb25b09e28a6317e5d9fe006323f9efd5.camel@postmarketos.org>
Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2026 14:35:05 +0100
From: Pablo Correa Gomez <pabloyoyoista@...tmarketos.org>
To: Markus Wichmann <nullplan@....net>, musl@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: Selecting locale source format
El Wed, 01-10-2025 a las 19:21 +0200, Markus Wichmann escribió:
> Am Wed, Oct 01, 2025 at 03:55:59PM +0200 schrieb Pablo Correa Gomez:
> > We got now a few replies from translators, and the most remarkable
> > thing that was brought up is how to deal with natural text whose
> > translations might change depending on context. Both plural forms and
> > declinations were brought up.
> >
> > Discussing a bit with Rich, it seems that such thing will not be an
> > issue for strings related to the libc API, which is what is the biggest
> > concern of the work we are doing now. However, there are
> > implementation-dependent strings in libc, like dynamic linker messages,
> > which could potentially be added in the future. Still, since we are
> > setting the file format, it would be important to make sure that
> > whatever we come up now is flexible enough to not block future
> > development. Any thoughts?
>
> The msgfmt source format specified by POSIX allows multiple plurals and
> an arbitrary C expression to select the correct one. So that is one way
> to go. The alternative is to stay agnostic to numbers and just always
> use all forms in parentheses, e.g. "Loaded %d file(s)".
>
> While I appreciate that the necessity for an expression parser might
> increase complexity by a lot, what little I do remember of Russian
> suggest that not many simpler alternatives exist. In Russian, just for
> example, there are three numbered forms, namely the nominative singular,
> the nominative plural, and the genitive plural. The nominative singular
> is used whenever the number in question ends in 1 but not 11, the
> nominative plural is used for 2-4 but not 12-14, and the genitive plural
> is used in all other cases.
>
> That logic is specific to one language (although I suspect a lot might
> be shared with other Slavic languages), so it must be specified in the
> source format if the feature is desired at all.
Rich, do you have any thought for this? On my side, if we think this is too
complicated, I would be happy to just wait and tackle this in a follow-up
project, specially if it's going to delay the current work further.
Best,
Pablo
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