From: Lugovoi Nikolai <meadow.nnick@...>
Date: 2006-01-19T17:13:37+09:00
Subject: [ANN] ICU4R 0.1.0 - initial release

==ICU4R v.0.1.0  - initial release ==

= Abstract

ICU4R is an attempt to provide better Unicode support for Ruby, based
on ICU library.

Project Site: http://rubyforge.org/projects/icu4r/

Download: http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/8116/icu4r-0.1.0.tar.gz

RDoc: http://icu4r.rubyforge.org/

= Install Notes

To build ICU4R you'll need GCC and ICU v3.4 libraries, which can be
downloaded from
    http://ibm.com/software/globalization/icu/downloads.jsp

Build and install:
    ruby extconf.rb && make && make check && make install

= Features

ICU4R is  Ruby C-extension binding for ICU library.
It is NOT mirroring full ICU object hierarchy, but is rather set of simple
interfaces for some practically useful functionality, and provides:

    - UString : String-like class with internal UTF16 storage;
    - UCA rules for UString comparisons (<=>, casecmp);
    - Unicode regular expressions;
    - encoding(codepage) conversion;
    - Unicode normalization;
    - access to resource bundles, including ICU locale data;
    - transliteration, also rule-based;

Bunch of locale-sensitive functions:
    - upcase/downcase;
    - string collation;
    - string search;
    - iterators over text line/word/char/sentence breaks;
    - message formatting (number/currency/string/time);
    - date and number parsing.

== DISCLAIMER ==

The code is slow and inefficient yet, can have many security and memory leaks,
bugs, inconsistent documentation, incomplete test suite. Use it at
your own risk.

Critics, bug reports,  feature requests are welcome :)

WBR, Nikolai Lugovoi <meadow.nnick@gmail.com>