Re: What's cooking in git.git (Feb 2011, #06; Sun, 27)

From: Piotr Krukowiecki <piotr.krukowiecki@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 2, 2011, 07:17 UTC
Message-ID: <AANLkTi=+iBR3OBZ=4fi_g=JMQKi=47F47hRsWxK=RbMv@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <7vwrkiccy6.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 6:24 AM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
>>   - Nit: you nicely use "%d commit%s" to handle the single/plural case
>>     in the warning message, but then you "them" later on. It needs
>>     (1 < lost) ? "them" : "it".
>
> I actually don't like playing games like that, especially when i18n topic
> is in flight.  Among the languages I know rules reasonably well, two has
> the rule that a countable noun is spelled differently depending on the
> number of that thing is one or more, and one spells the noun the same way
> regardless of the number.  Who knows if git needs to be translated into a
> language whose noun changes its shape three-way, depending on the number
> being one, two, or more?

For gettex this is described at http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html#Plural-forms

Don't know how it's handled in shell scripts or perl or whatever other language (which does not use gettext?)

-- 
Piotrek