Moving translation arguments to more flexible arguments

[lewri]

CorsixTH/CorsixTH/Lua/string_extensions.lua

Lines 105 to 118 in 87858c2

	--! Custom format function for our proxy strings.
	--! Keywords for replacing are: %s, %d, %%, %[num]% and %[num]:[tab]%
	--! NB: %s and %d are only replaced if none of the new keywords (%[num]% and %[num]:[tab]%) are present.
	--! NB: Always escape percent sign (i.e. use %% instead of %) in strings with formatting keywords! Failure
	--! to do so can cause unwanted behavior.
	--!
	--! Keywords:
	--! %s, %d : replaced with the n-th parameter, if the type matches (%s = string, %d = number).
	--! %% : replaced by single percent sign "%". Needed for escaping.
	--! %[num]% : ([num] between 1-9) replaced by [num]-th parameter.
	--! %[num]:[tab]% : replaced by string obtained by indexing string table _S.[tab] with [num]-th parameter.
	--!param str (string, stringProxy) the string that contains keywords to be replaced
	--!param ... (string, stringProxy, number) parameters to be inserted in the string (or used for lookup)
	--!return formatted stringProxy, if any of the result's components was a stringProxy, else formatted string

Currently the majority of our strings use %s and %d, where they can expect certain types. This can pose an issue to translators if they needed to swap order of arguments of strings without prior knowledge of how those arguments work. A translator can get around this by converting arguments to the newer %[1-9]% format, which does not discriminate against type and targets the [n]th argument in a string.format call. Is it correct to assume translators have this knowledge?

Within our translation files, we can see that translators almost exclusively find easiest to use what they are given in the original string (if we use %s they use %s, %1% they use %1% etc. If we wanted to grant more flexibility across the board (and help prevent string format crashes) we could encourage switching to use %[1-9]% in every place possible in our strings. Original strings may not be targetable due to copyright, but amended or new strings can be. Some additional notation may need adding to a translation file for basic guidance.