Should a sentence without numbers be added to stringsdict?

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clayellis OP

Created Oct ’20

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In the Stringsdict File Format appendix of the Internationalization Guide it states:

Avoid using a .stringsdict file with a string that does not include a number, because a language might define generic singular and plural forms in ways that don’t work well with the one and other categories.

By “does not include a number”, does that mean if a digit is not present in the string it shouldn’t be added to the .stringsdict?

For example: would a string like “Where is your dog?” be a bad candidate because it doesn’t contain a number even though it could be pluralized to “Where are your dogs?“ If so, what is the correct way to localize that example string?

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Answer 1

Systems Engineer OP

Apple

Oct ’20

That's true, your example should not use a Stringsdict.

The documentation you quoted means Stringsdict doesn't support a 1/plural rule.
1 in the sense count == 1.
That's different than the existing rule one. In Russian, one is applied for count == 1, 21, 31, 41, 51, 61…

Then, the way to do this currently is to check == 1 literally in code.

However, what's supported from Stringsdict is to remove numbers for specific cases, per language.
For instance:

Close %#@numberOfTabs@
- one (1): This Tab
- other (*): All %d Tabs

In Russian would be localized as:

Закрыть %#@numberOfTabs@
- one (1, 21, 31…): %d вкладку
- few (2, 3, 4, 22, 23…): %d вкладки
- many (5, 6, 7…): %d вкладок

To be complete here, if you want a “Close Both Tabs” you cannot use the case two.
First, it wouldn't work in English because it only knows rules one/other. Then, some language like Slovenian have two to describe 2, 102, 202…
So here you'd want a check in code for == 2 as well.

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