Re: [RFC][PATCH v5 01/13] Implement alternative month names (bug 10871).

[Rafal Luzynski <digitalfreak at lingonborough dot com>]

30.12.2016 23:22 Zack Weinberg <zackw@panix.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Dec 30, 2016 at 2:07 PM, Rafal Luzynski
> <digitalfreak@lingonborough.com> wrote:
> > 30.12.2016 14:00 Joseph Myers <joseph@codesourcery.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> On Fri, 23 Dec 2016, Rafal Luzynski wrote:
> >>
> >> > This patch defines the new constants ALTMON_1 .. ALTMON_12 which allow
> >> > for defining the alternative month forms where required.
> >>
> >> I don't see anything here to address the namespace issue (that no existing
> >> version of POSIX permits those names to be visible in langinfo.h, so only
> >> implementation-namespace names for those symbols may be visible unless
> >> __USE_GNU, much as with the existing __USE_GNU conditionals in that
> >> header).
> >
> > I think you refer to this post: [1]. I thought we could treat this
> > future POSIX change [2] as if it had been existing now. But if not,
> > especially if it can be reworked in future once the change is accepted
> > as part of POSIX, then I'm OK with this requirement.
>
> We don't like to jump the gun on these things. Note that that
> proposal has been "approved" since 2010 but still hasn't been
> officially published - there's no good way to predict how much longer
> it will take.
>
> Please put the constants under __USE_GNU for now. They can be changed
> to __USE_XOPENwhatever in a patch release after we know what goes in
> "whatever".
>
> zw

OK, understood, I will follow that.

Now I'm thinking about another thing: I still wonder if abbreviated
months names (ABMON and %b) should also have their alternative
(nominative/genitive) form.  Finally I've found that CLDR provides
the abbreviated forms which differ in some languages using Cyrillic
alphabet, I mean Belorussian, Russian, Ukrainian, and probably more.
In these languages "May" is - no wonder - "май" ("may"), and the
genitive form is - also no wonder - "мая" ("maya").  Since the
full month name has only 3 letters there is no need to abbreviate
it, the abbreviated form equals the full form and includes the
declension suffix.  So far I'm not aware of any implementation of
strftime() supporting this so if that's ever implemented it will
be purely GNU-only extension.

What do you think?

Also, from another post: if localedef utility has to generate
the missing alt_mon section as a copy of mon section then it makes
my huge half-megabyte patch no longer necessary.  I really like
this idea!

Regards,

Rafal