Plural Forms of gettext and Unicode

This post is an update of the previous post. As I wrote here, this is the result of my brief discussion with Andika Triwidada, on the GNOME l10n ID telegram channel. As already written here, which is the correct identification of plural forms for Indonesian? Using gettext form? Or Unicode?

GNU gettext

See https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Plural-forms.html.

Two forms, singular used for one onl This is the form used in most existing programs since it is what English is using. A header entry would look like this:

Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=n != 1;

(Note: this uses the feature of C expressions that boolean expressions have to value zero or one.) Languages with this property include: Austronesian family: Bahasa Indonesian

Unicode

https://unicode-org.github.io/cldr-staging/charts/37/supplemental/language_plural_rules.html

Plural-Forms: nplurals=1; plural=0;

Cases Have Been Found

  • Single: There is one item blah blah blah
  • Plural: There are %d items blah blah blah

Conclusions

  • Back to nplurals=1
  • If you encounter a case like the one above, please report it as a bug

The UI translation for GNOME 42 has started, I’ve also made a list of po files that need to be adjusted. Happy translating!

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