I used to write switch/if blocks for:

• 0 rows → “No results” • 1 row → “1 result” • n rows → “{n} results”

Which seems trivial in English, but gets messy once you support languages with multiple plural categories.

I wasn’t really aware of how nuanced plural rules are until I dug into ICU. The syntax looked intimidating at first, but it actually removes a lot of branching from application code.

I’ve been using an online ICU message editor (https://intlpull.com/tools/icu-message-editor) to experiment with plural/select cases and different locales helped me understand edge cases much faster than reading the spec alone.

  .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).

https://projectfluent.org/

I wonder why it hasn't been adopted more widely.

https://lokalized.com

What I can say that it's a well-maintained format but also kinda hard to learn.

What is the equivalent of xgettext.pl, the file extension for the main catalog file `.po`, the __ function?

How does gender work (small example)? How does layering pt_BR on pt_PT work?

What is a compelling reason to switch?

Does anyone have reason for more optimism?