From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2003-06-30T07:46:04+09:00
Subject: Re: Message catalogs (I18N) overnight hack...

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Josef 'Jupp' Schugt" <jupp@gmx.de>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2003 2:30 PM
Subject: Re: Message catalogs (I18N) overnight hack

[snip]

Thanks for these notes. But my feeble knowledge of 
German is not the point here.

Your mention of the decimal point and similar issues
are things I had not thought of, however.

> Technical side: According to me redefining 'print' is an unacceptable
> violation of the principle of least surprise. The command reads 
> 'print' as in 'print that book' not as in 'publish a translation of 
> that book'.

I see what you mean. But if one can turn this on/off dynamically,
it may not be so bad.

> What about this?
> 
> String.locale('C', 'de_DE')
> puts 'Alternatives exist'.l10n
> 
> First argument of String.locale is language strings are expected to 
> be in ('C' is default), second is target language).

I see the advantages of this. But one of my goals
was to be able to internationalize without too many
changes to the original program. And another is to
preserve readability and simplicity -- I dislike 
having to call a method every time I use a string.

It remains to be seen whether this will be released,
anyway. There are issues to resolve.

Thanks,
Hal

--
Hal Fulton
hal9000@hypermetrics.com