ANN: Gnome Locale Support and Development list

[danilo gnome org (Danilo Åegan)]

We have created a list for discussing of locale-related functionality in
GNOME, and creating a library, mostly using the Unicode CLDR
information, which is not available in glibc locale files. The CLDR data
is currently used in Sun's OpenOffice.Org, IBM's ICU, and Apple's Mac
OS X.

This was needed because most of these things were happening in
translations instead of proper locales, mostly for two things:

1) The glibc locale data and functionality is limited to what it is, and
does not include some features users would require in some locales,
including genitive dates for Slavic languages and alternative calendars
for middle eastern countries.

Also, glibc data doesn't include what many applications could use for
better functionality, like locale-specific exemplar characters,
quotation marks, country, language, locale, and timezone names, extended
currency info, text direction, holiday info, and general data about
which script a language is written in, in which countries there are a
commercially important number of speakers, and how countries should be
divided to avoid a flat list.

2) Getting any patch into glibc locale data files or subsystem would
require spending a lot of time, most of in waiting. (While we understand
some of the reasons behind that, we can't usually wait that much.)

The basic plan is to create a nice and clean API, and then providing
easy access to commonly desired functionality such as date and time
formatting, per-user customisation and broader support for locale data.
We also hope that library resulting from this effort will find its use
beyond Gnome, so we invite everybody else to help us define and
develop it.

The list is at:

  http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/locale-list

You can find about the CLDR project at:

  http://www.cldr.info/

For the discussion that led to the creation of the list, see: 

  http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=307121

Looking forward to your feedback and help,

  Roozbeh Pournader,
  Danilo Åegan