From: Austin Ziegler <Austin.Ziegler@...>
Date: 2004-06-03T05:59:47+09:00
Subject: Re: What is the equivalent of Python's "%s" % "MyString"?

Hal Fulton [mailto:hal9000@hypermetrics.com]:
> Austin:
>> GGaramuno:
>>> Nobu:
>>>> Sam Sungshik Kong wrote in [ruby-talk:102028]:
>>>>> s = "My name is %(name)s and my age is %(age)d." % {"name":
>>>>> "Sam", "age": 34}
>>>>>
>>>>> I know that ruby has "#{name}" expression. But that requires a
>>>>> variable named "name" in advance. I want to bind the format
>>>>> string and data later.
>>>> I proposed that feature once in [ruby-dev:16351], though
>>>> rejected, but still I think that it would be useful for I18N.
>>>> Is it worth for RCR?
>>> Do you have an example on how would you use this? I ask because I
>>> would also vote strongly against it.
>> For I18N, a facility like this is essential, as different languages
>> may require words in different orders.
> [snip]
>
> Do you consider it essential to have the items named? Or is it
> sufficient to number them and know the original ordering (also a
> common scheme)?

I believe it is more meaningful to have the items named. I just
learned about the numbered scheme today, and while it's useful to a
point, it doesn't necessarily help the translators, where
meaningfully named tags will be very useful to translators.

> OT: Forgive my ignorance, but can you/someone summarize the
> differences in I18N, L10N, and M17N?

I18N: the process of making code easy to localize.
L10N: the process of localizing the code.
M17N: both of the above? (I don't know.)

Ruwiki is (mostly) I18Ned[1], and it has been L10Ned to two
languages so far (German and Spanish). I think that I have had
offers of L10N for a variant of Chinese and Russian, but that
information is on a different computer. Most of Ruwiki's I18N/L10N
effort is in the templates, but the messages are necessary for
exception handling, etc.

-austin
[1] There are a few bits in the RDoc templating library that aren't,
    and there will be in the new diff library that aren't, but I
    can't easily dig into those -- I might be able to catch them,
    though, and deal with them properly.
--
austin ziegler * austin.ziegler@evault.com