gnome-language-selector crashed with TypeError in check_status()

This is due to translations of plurals not including the %d variables from the original string.

Launchpad should be in general checking this, but I've filed bug 456210 in case it doesn't do it in all cases. Colin also mentions that 'msgfmt --check-format' does not seem to catch these errors on python-format strings.

I've also contacted the Hebrew translator to fix them in Launchpad, but in the meantime I've demoted the translations to suggestions so that at least they will not be included in the next translations export to avoid the crash.

This bug was fixed in the package language-selector - 0.4.16

---------------
language-selector (0.4.16) karmic; urgency=low

  * Add --show-installed option to check-language-support, so that ubiquity
    can arrange to keep language support packages installed that are already
    present in the live filesystem.
  * Enable translation for check-language-support.
  * Mark Arabic translations of "%d to install" and "%d to remove" as fuzzy,
    until such time as they're corrected in Launchpad (LP: #409785).
  * ... and likewise for Hebrew (LP: #363990).

 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:02:27 +0100

I've noticed that there were more incorrectly translated %s variables in Hebrew, which I've now reported as bug 456290

Thanks for good work, David.

So we have a different problem
The rule in Hebrew is to enumerate a single item with words instead of numerical enumeration
Meaning:
Instead of writing 1 apple as in English in Hebrew it should be One apple
When there are several items they should be enumerated numerically (3 apples)

So changing the strings back to %d won't do the trick...
Ignoring the %d trick was done previously at the "update manager" package, the translation there is "One hour" instead of "%d hour", I'm not sure its working as expected (I reported a misbehave of the app before) but its not crashing either

So it seems that in some languages (Arabic as well, see bug 409785) skipping the variable is required in some plural forms. Here's an example for Orca in Arabic (I couldn't quickly find any Hebrew example for a Python app)

#: ../src/orca/braille_generator.py:166
#, python-format
msgid "(%d dialog)"
msgid_plural "(%d dialogs)"
msgstr[0] "(لا حوار)"
msgstr[1] "(حوار واحد)"
msgstr[2] "(حواران)"
msgstr[3] "(%d حوارات)"
msgstr[4] "(%d حوارا)"
msgstr[5] "(%d حوارا)"

> I'm not sure its working as expected (I reported a misbehave of the app before) but its not crashing either

Yaron, do you think you could post a link to the bug you reported against update-manager as well?

> > I'm not sure its working as expected (I reported a misbehave of the
> app before) but its not crashing either
>
> Yaron, do you think you could post a link to the bug you reported
> against update-manager as well?
>

Well off course:
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/language-pack-he/+bug/349378

I am the only subscriber to this bug and there are no comments so I guess
that means the bug was completely ignored, I'm glad its useful now

Arabic use 6 plural forms, from what I see in your report for each %d lower
than 3 (until 0 including) they use word based enumeration, each number
higher than 2 uses the %d variable

I'm looking forward to your comments,
Best Regards,
Yaron

For Arabic, the first 3 forms can be read like "no books", "one book", "three books" where using the word form of the numbers is mandatory because it has morphological and grammatical considerations (i.e. the Arabic phrase for "two books" is one word etc.)