[bug #58362] Fallback for locales/languages with modifiers

[Bruno Haible]

Update of bug #58362 (project gettext):

                  Status:               Need Info => Not a Bug              
             Assigned to:                    None => haible                 
             Open/Closed:                    Open => Closed                 

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Follow-up Comment #3:

The combination of $LC_ALL (empty or unset), $LC_MESSAGES (sr_RS.UTF-8@latin),
$LANG (irrelevant since LC_MESSAGES is set), and $LANGUAGE (empty or unset)
means that you requested the translation for the sr_RS.UTF-8@latin locale.

> The message catalogue
/usr/share/locale/sr@latin/LC_MESSAGES/gnome-desktop-3.0.mo does not include
any translation of "Latin", which makes gettext pick the translation from
/usr/share/locale/sr/LC_MESSAGES/gnome-desktop-3.0.mo. I would have expected
it to use the msgid string instead.

This is a feature. The assumptions are that
1) Since a translation for Serbian in Serbia is not available, a translation
for Serbian generically will do,
2) Since a translation with Latin alphabet [for the particular message] is not
available, a translation for any alphabet will do, Cyrillic in this case.

The reasoning behind these "will do" assumptions is that in practice, most
readers will understand the output: Serbs in the Kosovo will understand
Serbian from Serbia and vice versa, and the Cyrillic alphabet should still be
familiar to most people talking Serbian.

Note: For the special case of the Latin Serbian locale, GNU gettext contains a
program 'recode-sr-latin' that helps in preparing a Latin message catalog from
a Cyrillic one. You use it like this:

msgfilter -i sr.po -o address@hidden recode-sr-latin

To apply it on a .mo file, use a pipe with msgunfmt first and msgfmt at the
end:

msgunfmt sr/LC_MESSAGES/package.mo | msgfilter recode-sr-latin | msgfmt -o
sr@latin/LC_MESSAGES/package.mo



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