Re: Before l10n, better practices for (message) ?

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On May 23, 2017, at 11:55, Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>> I'm currently going through package.el and the easiest solution I have for 
>> now is replace things like "%d package%s to install" (where %s is "s" 
>> depending on whether %d is greater than 1...) into "Number of packages to 
>> install: %d.".
> 
> Just replace it with 2 different spellings dispatched by the number.

I know we don't have l10n now, but what you propose is also based on the 
grammatical assumption that we have only 2 possible forms so I would try to 
avoid that too.

>> So, as I just wrote, I'm working on package.el right now and I'll submit a 
>> patch, and when I'm done, I'd like to see what kind of mechanisms we have 
>> (or we need to create) to extract strings and use localized ressources.
> 
> So for now let's fix this bug in the most direct and "unclever" way we
> know of.

Ok, I'll do it.

> We don't have any mechanisms that I know of, and won't have until the
> large part of the i10n issues is resolved by motivated individuals.

I guess I just found something to do in the coming months... :)

What I'll do is propose a patch for package.el that makes UI strings the most 
linguistically neutral possible (within my understanding of English), and after 
discussing the changes, if we can use that as a base to create a list of "best 
practices", I'll use that to check the other packages included in the 
distribution.

Once we have the strings right, we'll worry about the other mechanisms that 
lead to the internationalization of the packages.

Jean-Christophe