Plural forms should be reported with correct grammar

[CyrilleB79]

I open this issue since:

• ngettext is now supported by NVDA (I do not know exactly since when)
• A first use of ngettext has been introduced in Report appointment categories in Microsoft Outlook #11598 and Flexibility of outlook categories translation #12432
• Users and translators of some languages are waiting for plural forms to be supported (cf this thread). This seems to be more critical for languages such as slavic languages where many plural form exist.

Steps to reproduce:

• Go to a web page with lists, e.g. this issue:
• Arrow down to a list with one item, e.g. the example list below:
  • Example list item
• Listen what is reported

Actual behavior:

"List with 1 items" is reported.

Expected behavior:

"List with 1 item" is reported (no 's' to 'item')

System configuration

NVDA installed/portable/running from source:

source

NVDA version:

last alpha

Windows version:

10

Name and version of other software in use when reproducing the issue:

Other information about your system:

Other questions

Does the issue still occur after restarting your computer?

yes

Have you tried any other versions of NVDA? If so, please report their behaviors.

Same issue in 2020.4

If add-ons are disabled, is your problem still occurring?

yes

Does the issue still occur after you run the COM Registration Fixing Tool in NVDA's tools menu?

N/A

Implementation strategy

In initial description of #12432, @feerrenrut wrote:

We use ngettext in one location, essentially a trial for now.

Since the use of categories for Outlook calendar items impact few people, I would recommend:

1. Make a PR against beta introducing another test message with plural form more widely used. "List of n items" could be used.
2. Make a PR for 2021.2 for the remaining simple forms (only one value in the message)
3. Make a future separate PR for the more complex forms that may need to split the messages such as "table with x rows and y columns"; a gramatical analysis is required in order to know how to split the strings for this case.

A rapid estimation let me think that about 38 messages are concerned with plural forms.

@feerrenrut would you accept the first PR against beta to make a wider test?

[CyrilleB79]

Since the only use of ngettext was removed in #12448, the implementation strategy could be as follows:

1. Fix the issue in the checkPot caused by the use of ngettext (cf. Fix-up of #12432: Fix key error when reading appointment with categories #12435 (comment)); @feerrenrut, @michaelDCurran could you elaborate on the encountered issue? (link to a failed checkPot)
2. Use ngettext for the simple cases (the majority), i.e. the messages containing only one value that can trigger a plural form.
3. Use ngettext for more complex messages that need to be split in more simple messages.

Distinguishing the two last steps in two separate PRs may allow to revert only the last PR if issues are encountered when splitting complex strings.

Since all occurrence of ngettext has been removed from NVDA 2021.1 beta branch, we can now handle these three PRs in alpha branch without problem and without emergency.

[feerrenrut]

These errors occurred in the translation system. In response to a translator making a commit to the ScreenReaderTranslations repository (hosted on assembla), the *.po file is checked with a custom poChecker.

We noticed messages such as the following going to many translators:

surveyor committed Changeset [61438]: small fixes

small fixes

Files Affected:
M /tr/nvda.po

Files count: 1
Commit (by surveyor)


File /home/nvdal10n/mr/srt/tr/nvda.po: 1 error

Message starting on line 7190
Original: "{startTime} to {endTime}"
Translated: "category {categories}"
Error: missing brace format interpolation, extra brace format interpolation
Expected: these brace format interpolations: {endTime}, {startTime}
Got: these brace format interpolations: {categories}

Note that the original is about start time, the translated was about categories. Similar error messages (all referencing categories) were being seen for many commits by different translators.