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

[Zack Weinberg <zackw at panix dot com>]

On Fri, Dec 30, 2016 at 4:32 AM, Florian Weimer <fweimer@redhat.com> wrote:
> On 12/30/2016 12:53 AM, Rafal Luzynski wrote:
>> 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.
...
>> But the backward compatibility has been explicitly required
>> here: [1] and in follow-ups like [2].
...
> These comments were based on your own presentation of the issue, and not
> independent research, so they are flawed.
>
> If this was a bug fix, it should apply to old binaries as well.

For the record, I do think that this constitutes a bug fix.

> The problem is that your approach breaks about as many usage scenarios as it
> fixes, and I'm still puzzled why you continue to push for this approach.  A
> 100% backwards-compatible alternative exists, so why not use it?  True, a
> future POSIX update may break backwards compatibility, but that's a POSIX
> bug in the making, and not something we should follow blindly.

FreeBSD using genitive for %B is a strong argument in favor, I think.

But there is a way to finesse the issue.  Split the patch series.
Introduce %OB, ALTMON_*, etc., but leave the MON_* data as nominative;
add the genitive as ALTMON_*.  No special treatment for old binaries.
If that happens quickly, it can make 2.25.

Then the question of which %-code should produce which case is merely
a question of what to put where in the locale database, and that can
be deferred and researched in more detail.

zw

p.s. Do we know for certain that no other noun cases will ever be needed?