Re: [Translation-i18n] Need some help about plural forms

[Tomas K. <to...@us...>]

> Axel Hecht wrote:
>> To quote
>> http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/gettext_150.html:
>
> This is a bit outdated. The manual in the current gettext release has more
> to say on this topic:
>
> "   You might now ask, `ngettext' handles only numbers N of type
>    `unsigned long'.  What about larger integer types?  What about negative
>    numbers?  What about floating-point numbers?
>
>    ...
>
>    Negative and floating-point values usually represent physical
>    entities for which singular and plural don't clearly apply.  In such
>    cases, there is no need to use `ngettext'; a simple `gettext' call with
>    a form suitable for all values will do.  For example:
>
>      printf (gettext ("Time elapsed: %.3f seconds"),
>              num_milliseconds * 0.001);
>
>    Even if NUM_MILLISECONDS happens to be a multiple of 1000, the output
>      Time elapsed: 1.000 seconds
>    is acceptable in English, and similarly for other languages.
> "

plural forms apply to negative numbers in Lithuanian. Simple gettext call
does not work, because language uses three different forms with numbers.

I suspect that my application will use only positive numbers and I won't
have issues with negative numbers or floats. I've noticed invalid forms
only because I had to test gettext library and php-gettext classes and ran
tests with numbers from -200 to +200.

PHP does not support unsigned integers. I've solved issue by using
absolute value in ngettext call and signed value in sprintf call.


-- 
Tomas