[Ocaml-i18n] proposal: message catalogue system

Richard Jones rich at annexia.org
Sat Dec 6 07:16:57 PST 2003


On Sat, Dec 06, 2003 at 11:50:54AM +0000, Benjamin Geer wrote:
> Richard Jones wrote:
> >  _("Number of messages in ::folder:: : ::n::", folder => $foldername,
> >                                                n => $nr_messages)
> 
> For a sentence like
> 
>   Your search returned x files in y directories.
> 
> that would get very awkward.  The usability department might not be 
> happy with
> 
>   Number of directories containing matching files: y.
>   Number of matching files in those directories: x.

You're dead right. I didn't claim that gettext was ideal, just that it
does solve a good 95% of the problem, without undue complication.

> http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.8.0/lib/Locale/Maketext/TPJ13.html

I looked at this paper, and this does seem to be a good approach,
although they could do with reducing the overhead of what the
programmer needs to type, and they should make the language implicit
(eg. in a global or environment variable) since it rarely changes and
shouldn't have to be constantly passed around by the programmer.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones. http://www.annexia.org/ http://freshmeat.net/users/rwmj
Merjis Ltd. http://www.merjis.com/ - improving website return on investment
'There is a joke about American engineers and French engineers. The
American team brings a prototype to the French team. The French team's
response is: "Well, it works fine in practice; but how will it hold up
in theory?"'



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