Re: [PATCH 2/5] i18n: mark relative dates for translation

[Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 1:51 AM, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy wrote:
>
>> English dates get correct plural/singular form as a side effect.
> [...]
>> +++ b/date.c
>> @@ -93,38 +93,46 @@ const char *show_date_relative(unsigned long time, int tz,
> [...]
>>       if (diff < 90) {
>> -             snprintf(timebuf, timebuf_size, "%lu seconds ago", diff);
>> +             snprintf(timebuf, timebuf_size,
>> +                      Q_("%lu second ago", "%lu seconds ago", diff), diff);
>>               return timebuf;
>
> This leaves me vaguely nervous --- sure, no language is going to use
> an expression for "<n> years" that is more than 200 bytes long, but if
> one does, it would get truncated.
>
> Would something like the following (untested) on top make sense?

It does. I will reuse your patch next time.

> My other worry is that
>
>> +     struct strbuf sb = STRBUF_INIT;
>> +     strbuf_addf(&sb, Q_("%lu year", "%lu years", years), years);
>> +     /* TRANSLATORS: "%s" is "<n> years" */
>> +     snprintf(timebuf, timebuf_size,
>> +              Q_("%s, %lu month ago", "%s, %lu months ago", months),
>> +              sb.buf, months);
>> +     strbuf_release(&sb);
>
> seems excessively complicated.  How do translations normally deal with
> cases like this of strings with multiple numbers in them?

I don't recall any similar cases. A search for 'ago"' in all gnome
translations I have only shows "<one number> ago", or "%d blah ago,
<absolute time>". The closet is probably strftime, where translators
are free to reorder date and time items, something like this

/* Translators: the first %s is the number of months, the second the
number of years */
sprintf(.., "%s, %s ago", month_string, year_string);

Or we can just round it up and show only one number.
-- 
Duy