XPost: comp.lang.c, comp.lang.c++   
   From: garylscott@sbcglobal.net   
      
   On 1/23/2026 10:46 PM, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:   
   > On Fri, 23 Jan 2026 21:35:54 -0600, Lynn McGuire wrote:   
   >   
   >> I knew it was bad, but not that bad.   
   >   
   > Back in earlier Web 1.0 days, I developed an online shop system for   
   > a client, that had to be localizable for different target markets --   
   > different currencies, different languages.   
   >   
   > I developed a templating system, which allowed the code to substitute   
   > strings into other strings, making choices according to numbers of   
   > items (for singular-versus-plural cases), gender etc. Since the   
   > placeholders were substituted by name, not position, this allowed for   
   > differences in grammar (e.g. verb-noun ordering).   
   >   
   > As new languages came along with more grammatical peculiarities, I   
   > added new templating cases, that could substitute to exactly the same   
   > strings for existing languages. For example, a list of items in   
   > English might expand to one of   
   >   
   >      1 item -- “A”   
   >      2 items -- “A or B”   
   >      3 or more items -- “A, B, ... C or D”   
   >   
   > whereas in Japanese, the case with 3 items has to be distinguished   
   > from the ones with 4 or more items.   
   >   
   > The hard part was explaining the templating system to translators. I   
   > tried giving copious examples of how the substitutions would work in   
   > specific cases. As I recall, I still had to do some massaging of the   
   > strings they sent back, in some cases having to guess what they meant,   
   > and then get them to test the results, to confirm with them that the   
   > site was producing the correct messages in all cases.   
      
   I would think that in some cases, you could simply substitute a   
   different bubble help message for hovering over a provided icon,   
   nowadays.  Might be sufficient for some cases.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)