i18n: add stub Q_() wrapper for ngettext

The Q_ function translates a string representing some pharse with an
alternative plural form and uses the 'count' argument to choose which
form to return.  Use of Q_ solves the "%d noun(s)" problem in a way
that is portable to languages outside the Germanic and Romance
families.

In English, the semantics of Q_(sing, plur, count) are roughly
equivalent to

	count == 1 ? _(sing) : _(plur)

while in other languages there can be more variants (count == 0; more
random-looking rules based on the historical pronunciation of the
number).  Behind the scenes, the singular form is used to look up a
family of translations and the plural form is ignored unless no
translation is available.

Define such a Q_ in gettext.h with the English semantics so C code can
start using it to mark phrases with a count for translation.

The name "Q_" is taken from subversion and stands for "quantity".
Many projects just use ngettext directly without a wrapper analogous
to _; we should not do so because git's gettext.h is meant not to
conflict with system headers that might include libintl.h.

Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 10 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/gettext.h b/gettext.h
index 04b5958e2b..1b253b7e76 100644
--- a/gettext.h
+++ b/gettext.h
@@ -9,8 +9,8 @@
 #ifndef GETTEXT_H
 #define GETTEXT_H
 
-#ifdef _
-#error "namespace conflict: '_' is pre-defined?"
+#if defined(_) || defined(Q_)
+#error "namespace conflict: '_' or 'Q_' is pre-defined?"
 #endif
 
 #define FORMAT_PRESERVING(n) __attribute__((format_arg(n)))
@@ -26,6 +26,14 @@ static inline FORMAT_PRESERVING(1) const char *_(const char *msgid)
 	return use_gettext_poison() ? "# GETTEXT POISON #" : msgid;
 }
 
+static inline FORMAT_PRESERVING(1) FORMAT_PRESERVING(2)
+const char *Q_(const char *msgid, const char *plu, unsigned long n)
+{
+	if (use_gettext_poison())
+		return "# GETTEXT POISON #";
+	return n == 1 ? msgid : plu;
+}
+
 /* Mark msgid for translation but do not translate it. */
 #define N_(msgid) (msgid)