Re: OOC Library and Locales

["Eric W. Nikitin" <enikitin@apk.net>]

Hi,

"Griebling, Mike" <Mike.Griebling@alliedsignal.com> wrote:
> The problem is also going to be support in the underlying OS of Unicode.
> At the moment, I don't know of any OS that supports Unicode directly and
> transparently.  

I believe that Java gets around this by building the Unicode support
right into its core library.  That is, information for translation
between different encodings, Unicode character classification and
collation data, and all the Locale specific information are contained
right within the library itself.  For instance, there are `LocaleData'
and `LocaleElements' classes that contain locale-specific information
for each region ("NumberPatterns", "CurrencyElements",
"DateTimePatterns", "DateTimeElements", and so forth).

In order to achieve any kind of portability to other Oberon platforms,
as MvA has suggested, we may have to do something similar.


> IMHO, making a class-like locales is not that big a problem.  Just create
> another layer on top of the existing locale module and cache all the
> settings for a specific locale.

That would be a step in the right direction, especially considering
oo2c.


> My point was that it may not be practically necessary to do a whole
> lot better than what's in the C libraries.  We are especially lacking
> in volunteers to do the work.

That's certainly a continual problem that doesn't have an easy
solution.  


> > LocText and LocTextRider are supposed to be used.  How are databases
> > created and maintained?  
> 
> Using your favourite text editor.  Hence OS support for Unicode is a 
> prerequisite for getting this to work.  Does emacs support Unicode?

I know there's a way to "internationalize" emacs, but I'm not sure about
Unicode support specifically.  

I do agree with MvA that XML would be a better format than plain ASCII
files.  


> > Can this
> > mechanism be used to access resources other than text strings?
> 
> Not in the existing modules.  What else would need to be localized?

Supposedly in Java, any object can be used as a localized resource
through the resource bundling mechanism.  I've never had a real need for
anything other than text strings, so I can't give you a good answer
here.  Offhand what comes to mind is I might want to perhaps localize
images.  Although, I suppose you might also want to customize visual
components based on region.


> None of the OOC libraries or even the GC are set up to support 
> multi-threading AFAIK.  

Yeah, I know.  I was just trying to make trouble :)


Eric