Re: Date Format with month names in genitive case - your opinions?
20.04.2017 23:01 David Sapienza wrote: > > I didn't consider the fact that there are very few applications where the > standalone month name is used (e.g. calendars). Considering that, the problem > of "breaking" some applications, that was my main concern about your proposal, > could be solved without too many effort. This is what I was going to tell. To be honest, I should make a huge survey before telling that there are only few applications which display month names standalone and most of the applications which display dates display at least the day number and the month name together. I think that you as the translators have a bigger experience as you have translated many or all such applications. How many times did you translate "%d %B" or "%d %B %Y" vs. "%B" or "%B %Y"? Also the potential "breaking" is not greater than the current situation when all date formats are "broken". And, another good news, the difference will be visible in "only" about 20 languages (compared to about 200 languages currently supported by Linux). > > > > Original Message > > Subject: Re: Date Format with month names in genitive case - your > > opinions? > > Local Time: April 20, 2017 1:08 AM > > UTC Time: April 19, 2017 11:08 PM > > From: digitalfr...@lingonborough.com > > To: David Sapienza , > > gnome-i18n@gnome.org > > > > [...] > > An example of western European language where the genitive > > form is required but not handled correctly is Catalan: > > > > gener; febrer; març; abril - nominative forms when standalone, but: > > > > 20 de gener; 20 de febrer; 20 de març; 20 d’abril - there is currently > > no simple solution to display "de" vs. "d’" and complex solutions > > are not acceptable. > > > > > Here I completely got your point. > I mentioned Italian and French only because these are the two language I > speak. Are you able to understand Latin? It is not supported by any operating system I'm aware of but AFAIK it is close to Italian and it features the same complex declension system as many eastern European languages. I hope it will let you understand my idea even better. > By the way another language that needs the genitive form is Spanish > (Castilian): "20 de enero", "20 de febrero", "20 de marzo", ... Fortunately, no. I've consulted it with Spanish speaking people and since the preposition is always "de" it's sufficient for them to use "%d de %B" - problem solved. Even in your example: "20 de enero" is correct, "20 d’enero" would be incorrect. But of course if they decide to use this standalone/full-date (or basic/alternative or nominative/genitive) system they will be able to do it. > > > > > > > > In languages where the genitive form is used in full context, it is > > > often written in nominative form (as an abbreviation) > > > > I think I'm getting lost here: if a language requires a genitive > > form but a software offers only nominative form then it's a bug > > which I'm going to fix. > > > > Whether abbreviations should have the nominative/genitive variants > > is a separate question. But if you want to ask it then I'll answer: > > for a long time I also thought they don't need them because > > nominative/genitive cases are created by adding suffixes which > > are removed when making an abbreviation. Until I've found examples > > in Russian and Belarusian where the abbreviated nominative and > > genitive forms do differ. See my slides for more details. > > But abbreviations are the secondary problem. If you tell me how > > to handle the full forms I will help myself with the abbreviations. > > > > > > I must admit that initially I didn't see your slides. They made me change my > mind about your proposal. If these slides are so "powerful" then let me put the link again for those who have started reading only here: https://rluzynski.fedorapeople.org/slides/2017-01-27-DevConf.cz/GenitiveMonths-updated.pdf > I was quite convinced that the use of the nominative form in languages that > require the genitive form could be considered as an abbreviation and certainly > not as an error, and for this reason I thought that it wasn't worth doing this > change. No, this is an error caused by a software bug. Sometimes ignored, sometimes neglected, sometimes people say "ah, that's just a computer, let's enjoy that it can display our letters and it is localized at all", but sometimes makes people upset. > > [...] > In conclusion, considering the very small size of the problems that this > change will cause and the benefit that it will provide for the grammar side, I > think you convinced me. > > Dear regards, > > David Thank you for your feedback. Best regards, Rafal ___ gnome-i18n mailing list gnome-i18n@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.o
Re: Date Format with month names in genitive case - your opinions?
20.04.2017 15:06 Fabio Tomat wrote: > > Just to make things more complicated, I wanted to inform you that in > Friulian, we use this literally translated form: > at the _DAY_ of _MONTH_ of the YEAR > > Moreover we use ordinal and cardinal day numbers, ordinal for the first day > of the month, and cardinal for the others (2-31) > Moreover we use singular for the first day, plural for the others... > So we really need this solution. > > example: > al 1ⁿ di mai dal 2017 > ai 15 di mai dal 2017 This is a different issue, independent on what I'd like to discuss here. But I assure you that I'm aware of it and I've already commented here: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=768192 https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=10547#c2 Regards, Rafal ___ gnome-i18n mailing list gnome-i18n@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n
Re: Date Format with month names in genitive case - your opinions?
Thanks for your clarification, Tom. What you wrote is exactly what I meant. See also more comments below: 20.04.2017 13:05 Tom Tryfonidis wrote: > > I have a feeling that the use of nominative and genitive cases on the topic > is the main reason for misunderstandings. We need to focus whether we should > use %B for "full date" form or not, as this is the common factor for all > languages now. > > Greek translations (i assume other affected languages too) already use %B for > "full date" form, and a proposed solution to use %B for the "standalone" form > will create an unneeded regression for these languages. That's true: "%B" is used because there is no better format specifier. And this produces the nominative case because there is no way to generate the genitive case. The same in many other languages. > So, to make things easier for everyone, i agree that it would be better to > use %B for "full date" form and %OB for "standalone" form (the chances to use > the alternative %OB format for the affected languages are low and limited only > to specific use cases, e.g. GNOME Calendar uses standalone form for > Week/Month/Year views). Of course, there will be a (hopefully) limited number of applications which will need minor fixes and I'm already preparing patches for them even if it is too early: - to prove that the number of the applications is low, - to prove that the changes are minor, - to provide the fix for what I might potentially break, - to let the people see the result already. Regards, Rafal ___ gnome-i18n mailing list gnome-i18n@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n
Re: Date Format with month names in genitive case - your opinions?
I didn't consider the fact that there are very few applications where the standalone month name is used (e.g. calendars). Considering that, the problem of "breaking" some applications, that was my main concern about your proposal, could be solved without too many effort. Original Message Subject: Re: Date Format with month names in genitive case - your opinions? Local Time: April 20, 2017 1:08 AM UTC Time: April 19, 2017 11:08 PM From: digitalfr...@lingonborough.com To: David Sapienza , gnome-i18n@gnome.org 19.04.2017 16:19 David Sapienza wrote: > In the Italian and French languages the nominative form is used in the full > context date too. I'm afraid we are running into misunderstanding here. If I used the terms "genitive" and "nominative" I used them for simplicity only. The fully correct terms should be "the form correct when displaying the month name in the full date context" and "the form correct when displaying the month name standalone". I'm aware that the correct form in Italian and French and many other languages is nominative and it will not be changed, no matter if you use "%B" or "%OB". An example of western European language where the genitive form is required but not handled correctly is Catalan: gener; febrer; març; abril - nominative forms when standalone, but: 20 de gener; 20 de febrer; 20 de març; 20 d’abril - there is currently no simple solution to display "de" vs. "d’" and complex solutions are not acceptable. Here I completely got your point. I mentioned Italian and French only because these are the two language I speak. By the way another language that needs the genitive form is Spanish (Castilian): "20 de enero", "20 de febrero", "20 de marzo", ... > In languages where the genitive form is used in full context, it is > often written in nominative form (as an abbreviation) I think I'm getting lost here: if a language requires a genitive form but a software offers only nominative form then it's a bug which I'm going to fix. Whether abbreviations should have the nominative/genitive variants is a separate question. But if you want to ask it then I'll answer: for a long time I also thought they don't need them because nominative/genitive cases are created by adding suffixes which are removed when making an abbreviation. Until I've found examples in Russian and Belarusian where the abbreviated nominative and genitive forms do differ. See my slides for more details. But abbreviations are the secondary problem. If you tell me how to handle the full forms I will help myself with the abbreviations. I must admit that initially I didn't see your slides. They made me change my mind about your proposal. I was quite convinced that the use of the nominative form in languages that require the genitive form could be considered as an abbreviation and certainly not as an error, and for this reason I thought that it wasn't worth doing this change. > and generally in these cases it can't be considered an error (it > won't break the application) whereas, using the genitive form for > the month name is certainly a bad thing (we can say that it'll > break the application). > > So I agree with fios: I think that it is better to use the "O" > modifier (%OB) for the genitive form (in the languages that uses > it) while we should keep the %B for the nominative form. OK. Again I don't agree here but I'm collecting opinions here and trying to explain my point of view. It does not mean that other people must agree with me and does not mean I will not change my mind in the future. Although at this moment I am strongly convinced to my opinion. Best regards, Rafal In conclusion, considering the very small size of the problems that this change will cause and the benefit that it will provide for the grammar side, I think you convinced me. Dear regards, David___ gnome-i18n mailing list gnome-i18n@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n
Re: Date Format with month names in genitive case - your opinions?
Just to make things more complicated, I wanted to inform you that in Friulian, we use this literally translated form: at the _DAY_ of _MONTH_ of the YEAR Moreover we use ordinal and cardinal day numbers, ordinal for the first day of the month, and cardinal for the others (2-31) Moreover we use singular for the first day, plural for the others... So we really need this solution. example: al 1ⁿ di mai dal 2017 ai 15 di mai dal 2017 Regards, Fabio 2017-04-20 13:05 GMT+02:00 Tom Tryfonidis : > I have a feeling that the use of nominative and genitive cases on the > topic is the main reason for misunderstandings. We need to focus whether we > should use %B for "full date" form or not, as this is the common factor for > all languages now. > > Greek translations (i assume other affected languages too) already use %B > for "full date" form, and a proposed solution to use %B for the > "standalone" form will create an unneeded regression for these languages. > > So, to make things easier for everyone, i agree that it would be better to > use %B for "full date" form and %OB for "standalone" form (the chances to > use the alternative %OB format for the affected languages are low and > limited only to specific use cases, e.g. GNOME Calendar uses standalone > form for Week/Month/Year views). > > Regards, > > Tom > > > > > On 20 April 2017 at 03:25, Rafal Luzynski > wrote: > >> (BTW, here is the date formatted incorrectly because the bug is >> so common in Linux systems including web services:) >> >> Dnia 20 kwiecień 2017 o 01:39 Piotr Drąg >> napisał(a): >> > >> > >> > 2017-04-20 1:08 GMT+02:00 Rafal Luzynski > m>: >> > > 19.04.2017 16:19 David Sapienza >> wrote: >> > >> So I agree with fios: I think that it is better to use the "O" >> > >> modifier (%OB) for the genitive form (in the languages that uses >> > >> it) while we should keep the %B for the nominative form. >> > > >> > > OK. Again I don't agree here but I'm collecting opinions here and >> > > trying to explain my point of view. It does not mean that other >> > > people must agree with me and does not mean I will not change >> > > my mind in the future. Although at this moment I am strongly >> > > convinced to my opinion. >> > > >> > >> > But am I correct to assume that with your solution, languages which >> > don’t need different standalone and “format” forms would just always >> > return the nominative (standalone) form? I.e. basically nothing >> > changes for them? >> >> Yes, definitely, always nominative. They may not even have a separate >> genitive form. >> >> More precisely: this depends on what they put in their locale database >> [1] but if they don't need/don't want/don't have genitives they will >> not put them there. >> >> > For example, *with* your patches to glibc: >> > >> > Original string is “%B %d”, which in the en_US locale expands to “April >> 20”. >> > >> > Polish translation is “%d %B”, which correctly gives us “20 >> > kwietnia[genitive]“. >> >> Exactly like that. Also compare: >> >> "%OB %d" in en_US → "April 20" (because there is no other form in >> English) >> "%d %OB" in Polish → "20 kwiecień" (nominative - incorrect! but you get >> what you wanted) >> >> "%OB" is an alternative form, this means it's not intended to be >> normally used except in special situations like when the month >> name is displayed standalone. "%B" should automagically work >> correctly in most cases. >> >> > Translation to a hypothetical Western language that doesn’t employ >> > genitive in this context is also “%d %B”, which correctly gives us “20 >> > aprilo[nominative]“. >> >> You don't need a hypothetical language: that's how it will work in >> English, French, Italian, German, and many more. :-) >> >> > This is how every other platform works right now. >> >> Yes, this means BSD [2] and OS X [3] where glib2 and other GNOME >> libraries are intended to work correctly. >> >> Best regards, >> >> Rafal >> >> >> [1] https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=tree;f=localedata/ >> locales;hb=HEAD >> [2] https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=strftime&sektion=3 >> [3] >> https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Dar >> win/Reference/ManPages/man3/strftime.3.html >> ___ >> gnome-i18n mailing list >> gnome-i18n@gnome.org >> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n >> > > > ___ > gnome-i18n mailing list > gnome-i18n@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n > > ___ gnome-i18n mailing list gnome-i18n@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n
Re: Date Format with month names in genitive case - your opinions?
I have a feeling that the use of nominative and genitive cases on the topic is the main reason for misunderstandings. We need to focus whether we should use %B for "full date" form or not, as this is the common factor for all languages now. Greek translations (i assume other affected languages too) already use %B for "full date" form, and a proposed solution to use %B for the "standalone" form will create an unneeded regression for these languages. So, to make things easier for everyone, i agree that it would be better to use %B for "full date" form and %OB for "standalone" form (the chances to use the alternative %OB format for the affected languages are low and limited only to specific use cases, e.g. GNOME Calendar uses standalone form for Week/Month/Year views). Regards, Tom On 20 April 2017 at 03:25, Rafal Luzynski wrote: > (BTW, here is the date formatted incorrectly because the bug is > so common in Linux systems including web services:) > > Dnia 20 kwiecień 2017 o 01:39 Piotr Drąg napisał(a): > > > > > > 2017-04-20 1:08 GMT+02:00 Rafal Luzynski >: > > > 19.04.2017 16:19 David Sapienza wrote: > > >> So I agree with fios: I think that it is better to use the "O" > > >> modifier (%OB) for the genitive form (in the languages that uses > > >> it) while we should keep the %B for the nominative form. > > > > > > OK. Again I don't agree here but I'm collecting opinions here and > > > trying to explain my point of view. It does not mean that other > > > people must agree with me and does not mean I will not change > > > my mind in the future. Although at this moment I am strongly > > > convinced to my opinion. > > > > > > > But am I correct to assume that with your solution, languages which > > don’t need different standalone and “format” forms would just always > > return the nominative (standalone) form? I.e. basically nothing > > changes for them? > > Yes, definitely, always nominative. They may not even have a separate > genitive form. > > More precisely: this depends on what they put in their locale database > [1] but if they don't need/don't want/don't have genitives they will > not put them there. > > > For example, *with* your patches to glibc: > > > > Original string is “%B %d”, which in the en_US locale expands to “April > 20”. > > > > Polish translation is “%d %B”, which correctly gives us “20 > > kwietnia[genitive]“. > > Exactly like that. Also compare: > > "%OB %d" in en_US → "April 20" (because there is no other form in English) > "%d %OB" in Polish → "20 kwiecień" (nominative - incorrect! but you get > what you wanted) > > "%OB" is an alternative form, this means it's not intended to be > normally used except in special situations like when the month > name is displayed standalone. "%B" should automagically work > correctly in most cases. > > > Translation to a hypothetical Western language that doesn’t employ > > genitive in this context is also “%d %B”, which correctly gives us “20 > > aprilo[nominative]“. > > You don't need a hypothetical language: that's how it will work in > English, French, Italian, German, and many more. :-) > > > This is how every other platform works right now. > > Yes, this means BSD [2] and OS X [3] where glib2 and other GNOME > libraries are intended to work correctly. > > Best regards, > > Rafal > > > [1] https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=tree;f=localedata/ > locales;hb=HEAD > [2] https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=strftime&sektion=3 > [3] > https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Dar > win/Reference/ManPages/man3/strftime.3.html > ___ > gnome-i18n mailing list > gnome-i18n@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n > ___ gnome-i18n mailing list gnome-i18n@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n
