std.locale

Andrei Alexandrescu SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org
Mon Mar 2 11:10:42 PST 2009


Georg Wrede wrote:
> 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...

Hehe, didn't see that.

>>> 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.

Very simple. If we have a locale table, I am thinking of dedicating a 
branch "std" in it to stuff that's in std. For example, I can use 
currentLocale.get("std", "array-separator") or something.

>> 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.

I understand.


Andrei



More information about the Digitalmars-d mailing list