Re: Emacs i18n

[Juri Linkov]

>> > But since we don't yet have ngettext, we cannot yet use this
>> > paradigm.  I thought by "from now on" you literally meant from now;
>> > did I misunderstand?
>>
>> Yes, literally.  After the patch from
>> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2019-03/msg00586.html
>> is pushed to master, ngettext is available to use for pluralization.
>
> That's changing history.

When you asked to read past discussions, I did it, and among all opinions
the most encouraging were the wise words of François Pinard:

  "Yet, when it is affordable to do so, and to spare the overall effort,
   it is often a good thing to aim in directions which have less chance to
   lead into dead ends, from which we might later have to backtrack from.
   Yet, dead ends are not always technical, so sometimes, not always, dead
   ends might be more fruitful than no road at all.  It is surely a fine art,
   being able to choose the best roads, considering all issues.

   My opinion is, when we are lacking of volunteer time, that the best road is
   the one having the least steps in it, and this often means that backtracking
   should be avoided.  Best is trying to do things the right way, even if not
   everything gets done at once.  So steps accumulate constructively over time."

I hope that starting with a small step of adding ngettext to provide
the correct plurals for English words would lead in the right direction
while avoiding the danger of backtracking from dead ends.