std.locale

[Georg Wrede]

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Georg Wrede wrote:
> You see, we're not communicating. I sent this link:
> 
> http://www.unicode.org/cldr/
> 
> Did you look at it? It is essentially a database of locale information 
> in a highly structured format. All I want is to define a structure 
> expressive enough to gobble the part of that database that is of 
> interest. The Phobos documentation will say, we just adopt their schema. 
> If users don't want to load any, then fine - everything is just like today.

I read the page. It says "This data is used by a wide spectrum of 
companies for their software internationalization and localization".

The first link in the text part is to the CLDR Overview ppt. I read it. 
On page 5 it says:

"Companies / Organizations
Adobe, Apple (Mac OS X), abas Software, Ascential Software, Avaya, BEA, 
BluePhoenix Solutions, BMC Software (Remedy), Business Objects, caris, 
CERN, ClearCommerce, Cognos, Debian Linux, D programming language, 
Gentoo Linux, GNU Classpath, HP, Hyperion, IBM, Inktomi, Innodata 
Isogen, Isogon, Informatica, Intel, Interlogics, IONA, IXOS, Macromedia, 
Mathworks, OpenOffice, Language Analysis Systems, Lawson Software, Leica 
Geosystems GIS & Mapping LLC, Mandrake Linux, Novell (SuSE), Optio 
Software, PayPal, Progress Software, Python, QNX, Quark, Rogue Wave, 
SAP, Siebel, SIL, SPSS, Software AG, Sun Microsystems (Solaris, Java), 
Sybase, Teradata (NCR), Trados, Trend Micro, Virage, webMethods, WMS 
Gaming, Xerox, Yahoo!, and many more…"

One sees here major companies, operating systems, and three languages: 
D, Python and Java. The page is from 2005.

So D "has had this since at least 2005". What can I say? I guess we have 
to implement it then...

>> What I'm saying is, it's debatable whether this stuff belongs to "the 
>> programming language itself" at all. Rather, it should be an external 
>> library, provided by someone else than us. It belongs to SourceForge 
>> or Dsource, not here.
> 
> http://www.unicode.org/cldr/
> 
> We just need to load it if there is such a need.

In another post you sounded as if there is a connection between this 
stuff and printing arrays. I'm not sure I see the connection.

> Let me try again: I don't want to define locale support. I want to 
> provide the basics for people to roll it out themselves.

I downloaded the files in http://unicode.org/Public/cldr/1.6.1/ which 
were core.zip, posix.zip, tests.zip and tools.zip. They unzipped to 
140MB, containing some 200 java files and some 800 xml files, among others.

The readme.txt in tools.zip says:

"The code is very preliminary, so don't expect stability from the APIs 
(or documentation!), since we still have to work out how we want to do 
the architecture."

The main web page says "CLDR 1.7 Tentative Schedule: 2008-09", but it 
still isn't on the download page. The last version is 2008-07-23 
Version1.6.1.

==============

My take:

  * This is still a moving target
  * Using this is a major hassle for the programmer
  * With D2 itelf a moving target, nobody is going to invest enough time 
in this to actually use it for something worthwhile in the next 6 to 12 
months anyway
  * This is more application level stuff than language level stuff
  * Doing this now will steal time from you, Walter, and many of us, 
both directly, and indirectly by leaching bandwidth in the newsgroup -- 
time that should be spent on more urgent or more important things, or 
even documentation
  * If it's so easy to do, then why not do it a week before the release 
of final D2

I really can't help it, but this is how I see it.