Adding a table of Mediawiki plural formatting rules
Plural/Mediawiki plural rules created and to be developed, portals are ok as they are.
I propose that we compile a table of Mediawiki plural formatting rules (possible alternative page destination is Translating:Mediawiki/Mediawiki plural formatting rules) for each language enabled at translatewiki.net, in plain English, a bit like the table they have at CLDR. I am prepared to do a lot of the work myself, but the draft would need to be reviewed by someone who can interpret the code (I will be guessing!). Any comments?
Interesting idea. I think it only makes sense if the table would contain all products we support (or at least all the different plural systems we support with the products for which those plural systems are used).
That would be a different table, which is also a good idea. My idea is for a table of rules by language, for Mediawiki only, written in plain English.
If plural is going to get a documentation, it should be something translators (and not only programmers) can understand. E.g Currently + means "The language has custom plural rule." What that rule is and what it does isn't really there. It might be somewhere in the huge table, but that's not really non-geek readable. Similarly for "default plural rule "n != 1"". What's n? And does "Empty cell" mean plurals don't work in that language? What's the expected behaviour when someone tries to use Plural in such a language?
There might be more (similar) things that need to be clarified.
Yes, I agree that plural needs better documentation. At present, the documentation for translators is mainly on the FAQ page. I intend to draft documentation for the plural page, intended mainly for translators. Would be grateful for all contributions!
The table of Mediawiki plural rules by language has been started, and awaits comments.
Looks good. What kind of comments are you looking for?
Good question. How about:
- Is there any more information that it would be useful to add to the table?
- The wording of the 'rules' follows the pattern on the CLDR table except without 'n'. OK?
- The group names follow the group names in the SVN table for CLDR. I think it will be useful to be able to sort the table by group.
- Have just realised that I haven't yet added a link to the language portal to the language names - will do that in due course.
Yup, its much better than Plural/Comparison of plural rules in various databases.
Am glad you like the table. To be fair, the purpose of the comparison table (tool in discussion on convergence between various plural rules) is very different to the purpose of the new table (general reference tool of Mediawiki plural rules).
Just few thoughts and suggestions:
- PLURAL rules for languages should imho be mentioned on their respective portal pages. I do not know current coverage. At least on Portal:ksh, I've included the MediaWiki versions of PLURAL, GENDER, and GRAMMAR.
- It would likely be wise, to have a common per language source for entries in various lists, such as Plural and possibly other, and portal pages, with can be included everywhere.
- The namespace "Portal:" is imho bewildering for newcomers, except ones coming from Omegawiki. "Language:" would likely be more intuitive.