Re: [RFC][PATCH v5 00/13][BZ 10871] Month names in genitive case

[Rafal Luzynski <digitalfreak at lingonborough dot com>]

29.12.2016 17:42 Zack Weinberg <zackw@panix.com> wrote:
> [...]
> I think you should just go ahead and change the behavior of %B
> unconditionally. Preserving the old behavior for old binaries is,
> IMNSHO, more likely to preserve existing bugs than to fix bugs.

I'd like to agree: backward compatibility code introduces lots of
mess IMO, it indeed looks like an attempt to preserve an existing
bug, and with time it will become less and less useful while will
probably remain in sources forever.  Skipping it is easy: my change
is split into multiple patches so if you don't want the backward
compatibility then you just skip those two patches, or actually
four patches counting *.abilist rebuilds, and here it is.

But the backward compatibility has been explicitly required
here: [1] and in follow-ups like [2].  The argument for it is that
some applications (calendars, I can't imagine anything else)
may need the months names in nominative form, which is currently
provided.  Here is an example of a calendar using genitive
form instead of nominative: [3].

Note that I've identified only 19 locales (17 unique languages)
where genitive/nominative problem exists.  To be honest and
precise: there is one more, Silesian, but it's not supported
by CLDR and I haven't found any reliable source of information
how to fix it so I leave it untouched.

> Requiring alt_mon for all locales seems fine to me.
>
> zw

I'm glad to read this.  Indeed, it simplifies the code.

Regards,

Rafal


[1] https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2016-06/msg00009.html
[2] https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2016-06/msg00019.html
[3] https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2016-11/msg00392.html