On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 5:28 PM, Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I think you're assuming on the syntax the
male/female/unknown trichotomy
you wanted to avoid.
No, because the semantics of the arguments would be language-specific.
Compare to {{plural:}}. In English, and by default for other
languages, {{plural:n|x|y}} will print x if n = 1, y if n != 1. On
the other hand, in Russian {{plural:}} takes three arguments (in
addition to the number). {{plural:n|x|y|z}} will apparently,
according to the comments, result in x if n = 1, 21, 31, ...; y if n =
2, 3, 4, 22, 23, 24, ...; and z otherwise. Likewise {{#gender:}}
could take varying arguments with varying semantics in different
languages.
Something else occurs to me, though: it might need to accept a list of
users as well. (The names could be delimited by some prohibited
character like /.) Different languages have different conventions
about when to use masculine and feminine for groups of users. I can't
think of a message where this would be needed, but it's something to
keep in mind if anyone takes a stab at this.