alt Hacker NewsThe meeting notes in the repo was a nice surprise. Overall looked great, striking a good balance.
.input {$var :number maximumFractionDigits=0}
.local $var2 = {$var :number maximumFractionDigits=2}
.match $var2
0 {{The selector can apply a different function to {$var} for the purposes of selection}}
* {{A placeholder in a pattern can apply a different function to {$var :number maximumFractionDigits=3}}}
I wish it'll at least stay small: no nesting, no plugins, no looping, no operators, no side effects or calls to external functions (see Log4J).
Replies
English has just singular and plural: one car, two cars, three cars (and zero cars).
Some languages have more variations. E.g. Czech, Slovene and Russian has 1, 2-4 and 5 as different cases.
Personally I think the syntax is too brittle. It looks too much like TeX code and it has the lisp like deal with lines ending with too many } braces.
I would separate it into two cases: simple strings with just simple interpolation and then a more fuller markup language, more like a simplified xml.
There are more example code at https://github.com/unicode-org/message-format-wg/blob/main/d...
It looks more like a DSL than configuration, but then given what I've learned about localization that's probably necessary in some cases!
However, ideally / in most cases it isn't.