Re: [PATCH] I18n flag for msgfmt

[Bruno Haible]

Roozbeh Pournader wrote:
> That will be a little hard to comprehend for translators, and
> specifically since the text will usually appear in a right-to-left
> context ...:
>
>       ..... OUTDIGIT>d>% .....
>
> (where dots are right-to-left characters). A simple %Id will just become
>         ..... Id% .....
>
> which is much more easier to read and write.

You're right, that's a convincing argument for choosing a syntax with
doesn't have bidi-neutral characters.

Ulrich Drepper wrote:
> ISO C only reerves lowercase letters, uppercase
> is free to use for extensions.  So the argumentation against supporting
> I directly is invalid.

OK, and if a program attempts to use '%I' in a format string for the sake
of a different platform (where the 'I' might mean something totally
different), then "xgettext" will not mark it as a valid format string, and
"msgfmt" will not do the special processing... So it seems safe to use
the %I directly in the msgstr. Will be in gettext-0.14.

Bruno