Ah ok.  Thanks for the info (and you too Paolo).  I guess gettext is
definitaly workable.  I guess this kind of thing would be something
someone could take a proper language like Smalltalk and research it,
but in the mean time gettext works.

On 10/15/07, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
> On Oct 15, 2007, at 6:39 , Jason Johnson wrote:
>
> > On 10/14/07, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
> >> So maketext allows the translator to not only translate phrases, but
> >> put in Perl code to generate them. Fine.
> >
> > Put in code to generate them, yes.  Perl just happened to be the first
> > place I've seen this implemented.
> >
> >> But most translators are not hackers and vice versa.
> >
> > For sure.
> >
> >> And going with
> >> an established system has its merits even though it may be not quite
> >> perfect (although gettext actually does handle multiple plural
> >> forms). There is a whole lot of infrastructure built around gettext
> >> already. At least that's why we went with gettext for Etoys now
> >> (https://translations.launchpad.net/etoys/).
> >>
> >> - Bert -
> >
> > Doesn't gettext handle the plural forms by making you put in a
> > translation for each case, in every language?
>
> If a language has only one form of plural you only need to put in
> one. If there are more plural forms, of course you need to put them
> all in if you want a perfect translation:
>
> http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Plural-forms.html
>
> > Did you read the
> > "horror story" part from the second link I sent?  If that story is
> > bogus then gettext is probably fine.
>
> It's not entirely bogus. But gettext has been extended to handle
> these cases, see above. I guess the one case that it cannot handle is
> if you have two numerals in the same phrase. Which can certainly be
> worked around with by splitting the phrase in two.
>
> - Bert -
>
>
>
>