feature: 1 plik, 2 pliki, 5 plikov

[Joosep-Georg Järvemaa]

Hi!

I did read the documentation and discovered this "pliki" problem. The same
story goes also with Russian. But what about the following idea.

In Polish .po files use syntax like this:

  # available forms
  msgid "<index> %d files"
  msgstr "all,all:1:1,last_digit:2:4"

  # default case
  msgid "<all> %d files"
  msgstr "%d plik&#243;v"

  # exactly 1
  msgid "<all:1:1> %d files"
  msgstr "%d plik"

  # last digit between 1 and 5 (not inclusive)
  msgid "<last_digit:2:4> %d files"
  msgstr "%d pliki"

and in English:

  msgid "<index> %d files"
  msgstr "all,all:1:1"

  msgid "<all> %d files"
  msgstr "%d files"

  msgid "<all:1:1> %d files"
  msgstr "%d file"

Now the application programmer (or even gettext itself) must before
outputting strings do something like that:

  str_result = msgid;

  if (msgid_contains_integer) {

    str_available_forms = gettext("<index> " + msgid);
    arr_available_forms = split(",", str_available_forms);

    foreach (arr_available_forms as $str_condition) {

      bool_match = TRUE;

      arr_condition = split(":", str_condition);

      str_algorithm = arr_condition[0];
      int_start = arr_condition[1];
      int_end = arr_condition[2];

      switch (str_algorithm) {
        case "last_digit":
          int_number = int_number - 10 * intval(int_number / 10);
          break;
        case "all":
          // same as default
        default:
          // leave the number untouched
      }
      if (! empty(int_start)) {
        bool_match = int_number <= int_start;
      }
      if (! empty(int_end)) {
        bool_match = bool_match && (int_number <= int_ent);
      }
      if (bool_match) {
        str_result = gettext("<" + str_condition + "> " + msgid);
      }
    }

  } else { // if (msgid_contains_integer)

    str_result = gettext(msgid);

  } // else : if (msgid_contains_integer)


This was, well, not in C ;) but hopefully understandable.


-- 
Joosep-Georg Järvemaa
Q:      Do you know what the death rate around here is?
A:      One per person.