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

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On May 24, 2017, at 3:36, Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> Having 2 forms is as close to the ideal as we can have, given that we
> don't have infrastructure for more complicated cases.

I'm just saying that for the case we are discussing, 1 form is enough:

>>>> "%d package%s to install"

->

>>>> "Number of packages to install: %d."

That's 1 form and that's way enough to convey the intended meaning.
It's just a way to write the original string. No need to use fancy grammar 
there.

>> 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.
> 
> I'm not sure package.el is a good starting point.  I think a much
> better starting point is to design the i10n infrastructure for Emacs.

I'm not considering l10n right now. Only best practices for writing UI strings. 
Considering the amount of convoluted strings in package.el, I think it is as 
good a start as it can be, at least for *that* purpose.

I'll have a few questions regarding the last 3 pieces of string generating code 
I found sometimes next week.

Jean-Christophe