Re: A draft for a multibyte and multi-codepoint C string interface

[Steffen "Daode" Nurpmeso <sdaoden%gmail.com@localhost>]

Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost> wrote:
 |> But when it comes to i18n, the locales are simply a half-baked
 |> solution, and nobody deal with them correctly---this probably means
 |> that the solution is not the good one.
 |
 |Locales as they are currently used are not a good solution to much of
 |anything.  They are a tool, which can be used to build soloutions to
 |those problems, but so far hasn't been.

They are the result of a one-week-on-a-caribic-island brainstorm
session when on friday evening one engineer faced the crowd with
„oh, and guys - how do we deal with the problem now?“
And that's it.

The real solution to these problems is terribly complicated (just
think of all the different calendars etc.) and possibly beyond the
scope of such a plain standard as ISO C / POSIX.
Because, otherwise, actually WE, would have to get our butt in
gear and really deal with the problem -- and that means an immense
increased complexity in respect to any input and output of data.

To me it is interesting that the POSIX standard defines the syntax
of locale files etc. in detail, but fails to fill it with content
that can be used by a Muslim or a Chinese or a Buddhist to at
least correctly display their own calendar.  Or their real date,
i don't think that a simple format string is sufficient to deal
with that.

It would have been a good thing if there would have been consensus
long, long ago, maybe in the mid-90s, resulting in a common i18n
solution alongside of Unix.  It is a pity that not even
Universities put some effort into this.  Just think of all the
international students that donated billions back to their
american and -- much lesser afaik -- british universities.  But
maybe i just failed to find any solution that addresses these
issues and works without requiring a bunch of 30 GNOME or QT / KDE
libraries -- i.e., anything more than libc.

--steffen