Item5515: Translation of time units is stupid

Problem

TWiki assumes to know about plurals in other languages: "seconds" is translated as "second" + "s". In Dutch this becomes the incomprehensable "secondens".

The same with "minute" + "s" = "minutens".

Caused by this template text:

"%1 has been editing the topic for %2 and the lease is still active for "
"another %3."

This line is used by Edit.pm and Func.pm, using

$past = TWiki::Time::formatDelta(
                        $t - $lease->{taken}, $session->{i18n} );

$session->{i18n} is the current language. This is only passed when $TWiki::cfg{UseLocale} = 1, which is strange, as the language should be retrieved without it.

OK, we are having both $session->i18n and $session->{i18n}. Only one is correct.

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Fixed that in Item5517, but it doesn't solve the problem.

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Solution

It appears that Lexicon.pm is fancier than I thought. It has this in the documentation:

    #: Hello.pm:11
    msgid "You have %quant(%1,piece) of mail."
    msgstr "Sie haben %quant(%1,Poststueck,Poststuecken)."

So in the translation file you must write the plural after the singular. For instance with German in de.po:

#. ($days)
#: lib/TWiki/Time.pm:290
msgid "%*(%1,day) "
msgstr "%*(%1,Tag,Tagen) "

This will create a correct translated string:

TestUser bearbeitet das Topic seit 1 Stunde 19 Minuten 20 Sekunden und die Ausleihung ist noch aktiv für weitere 40 Sekunden.

-- TWiki:Main/ArthurClemens - 10 Apr 2008