It is great that you are thinking about taking acs-lang a step further with Metadata on messages... incorrect order on translations is something that bothers me and is seen often in translated software. Metadata might eventually allow the storage of additional information as well. An example: German adjectives do not retain the same form in all contexts (unlike English), that is, they change their endings according to the words they accompany. Example:
- English: Christian's tasty apple
- German: Christian's schmackhafter Apfel
- English: Christian's tasty orange
- German: Christian's schmackhafte Apfelsine
Note: In German Apfel is of masculine gender and orange feminine, which determines the declination of the adjectives.
Although this goes above and beyond what we will need to start with (and I am sure it would get really complex very quickly), Peter's suggestion of using XML for the message catalogs combined with your suggestion for simple cases of word order might make it easier to add this kind of information in the future. I like the idea and I am interested to see if anyone else has something to say about it.
