Re: Grammatical forms in translatable texts

[Akim Demaille]

Hi Bruno!

Thanks for the answer.

Le 19 avr. 2020 à 14:04, Bruno Haible <address@hidden> a écrit :
> 
>>> Of course, you might consider this nitpicking.
> 
> It is not nitpicking. A msgid "syntax error, unexpected %s", where
> a translatable string is plugged in for %s, violates the i18n principle
> "Entire sentences", documented at
> https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Preparing-Strings.html

Yes, of course!  But it's better than what we had so far.  Gosh,
I hate reading

> $ cat foo.y
> %%
> $ bison foo.y
> foo.y:2.1: erreur: erreur de syntaxe, end of file inattendu

I prefer incorrect French than Frenglish:

> $ bison foo.y
> foo.y:2.1: erreur: fin de fichier inattendu


And it would be non acceptable to ask translators to address
all the possible cases

YYCASE_(0, YY_("syntax error"));
YYCASE_(1, YY_("syntax error, unexpected %s"));
YYCASE_(2, YY_("syntax error, unexpected %s, expecting %s"));
YYCASE_(3, YY_("syntax error, unexpected %s, expecting %s or %s"));
YYCASE_(4, YY_("syntax error, unexpected %s, expecting %s or %s or %s"));
YYCASE_(5, YY_("syntax error, unexpected %s, expecting %s or %s or %s or %s"));

The real good option I see (to get proper sentences rather than
forms) is the one I mentioned in my message for Bison 3.8.

Meanwhile, quotes around %s could improve the result.  Or, in the
case of French, defensive translation:

> foo.y:2.1: erreur: fin de fichier inattendu(e)



>> but I believe contexts would help
>> (https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Contexts.html).
> 
> I don't think contexts can help here. Context are a kind of namespacing
> system within a translation domain.

I was addressing the fact that token names might be too short
and be in conflict with other occurrences of the same word.
In Ruby, I frequently use s_ in such a case.

You didn't answer that part.  You dislike the idea of s_?

> The general solution, that works for any language, is to relax on the
> requirement that the error message should be a sentence. It can look
> like a form. For example:
> 
>   Syntax error.
>   Unexpected token: %s
>   Expected one of the following tokens: %s, ...
> 
> This way it doesn't matter whether the string substituted for %s,
> "kyrillischer Buchstabe", is a masculinum or neutrum, and how it would
> be declensed in a sentence.

But I'm not sure I'd do that in Bison itself.

Cheers!