Difference between CLDR plural rules and MediaWiki plural rules

The page on plural rule syntax at CLDR says: "There are two extra values that can be used with count attributes: 0 and 1. These are used for the explicit values, and may or may not be the same as the forms for "zero" and "one"." It seems that CLDR have got around the problem of defining additional categories for use in particular circumstances by introducing these 2 additional values. Would it be possible to write code for Mediawiki plural which does the same, enabling the use of '0' and '1' only when needed?

How would you specify those parameters?

I wrote the previous comment before I had understood how Mediawiki uses more than one defined plural ruleset to handle numberless sentences (and potentially sentences with zero?). Mediawiki's solution appears to be elegant, with simpler syntax for translators for numberless sentences.

However, you also say in another thread that it is 'hard to unify Mediawiki rules with other systems'. Would it be easier to unify with other systems if instead of making the second ruleset shorter than the normal ruleset, instead we made it longer, typically by adding an additional rule for 1 (or for 1 and 2 for Scottish Gaelic for example) and an additional rule for 0 where needed (Swahili would benefit from an additional rule for 0, for example). Making the second ruleset longer is not as elegant as the current system. But does it help with compatibility with other systems?

Other systems only support one ruleset - that's the problem. And frankly I don't see any reason for using multiple rulesets for one language except for translator's convenience. As far as I know the second ruleset is always a shortcut which can be done using the first ruleset in slight longer way. Make the shortcut harder makes it even more useless and we should rather just drop it in that case.

Fair enough.