Re: ngettext() not enough?

[Bruno Haible]

Paul Pogonyshev wrote:
> Consider this message: ``Black wins by %f'' (word `points' omitted.)  I'm
> not a native English-speaker, but in English it looks fine to me.  Now, if
> I translate this into Russian, the resulting message---``черные выиграли
> %f''--- is ugly and unnatural, because I omitted the translation of
> `points'.  However, I cannot put this word in, because I have no way of
> selecting its proper form, since my points are not integral.
>
> Is there any known way to solve/workaround this?

In my limited experience with Western-European languages, no distinction
is made between singular and plural when a floating-point value is used.
For example,
   The temperature rose by 6.0 degrees.
   The temperature rose by 1.03 degrees.
   The temperature rose by 0.2 degrees.

In other words, in those cases where a singular/plural distinction is made,
the quantity is an integer.

Question: Is this the same also for Russian?

Question: In your game, does the %f in "Black wins by %f" denotes an integer
or not?
If the answer is no, you still test whether (int)points == points,
if yes use a singular/plural form with %d, and if no use a fixed form with %f.

Bruno