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Re: Changes in nl_langinfo() and strftime() API in glibc


From: Bruno Haible
Subject: Re: Changes in nl_langinfo() and strftime() API in glibc
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2018 09:10:46 +0100
User-agent: KMail/5.1.3 (Linux/4.4.0-104-generic; KDE/5.18.0; x86_64; ; )

Hi Rafal,

> > "when the month is used as part of a complete date"
> > to
> > "when the month appears together with a day-of-month".
> 
> OK, I have posted this suggestion to libc-alpha:
> 
> https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2018-01/msg00773.html

Thanks. As Carlos says, the manual can even talk about language specific
things; it already does for the plural forms [1].

> > Ah, but translators will not look in the glibc manual. They read only
> > the gettext manual. So do we need some text in the gettext manual as
> > well?
> 
> I'm not sure which gettext manual you are thinking about but
> this gettext manual is actually a part of glibc:
> 
> https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/The-Uniforum-approach.html

I meant the GNU gettext manual [2].

> > In other words, is the %B / %OB distinction something that the
> > programmer can do, and the translator is not bothered about it?
> 
> I strongly believe that the format strings should be left for
> the translators and the programmer's choice of a format string
> should be correct for English but this is seldom correct for other
> languages. This is not because of the genitive/nominative month
> names but for the reasons like:
> 
> - English often uses the month-day order, most of other languages
>   use the day-month order;
> - many languages require a dot after the day number;
> - English requires a comma after the day number if it is followed
>   by a year number;
> - some languages (e.g., East Asian) do not have month names and
>   use the month numbers instead;
> - and many more...

Interesting. Thanks for these thoughts. I have opened a ticket in the
gettext bug tracker to document these things. [3].

Bruno

[1] 
https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Advanced-gettext-functions.html
[2] https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/
[3] https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?52971




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