Re: New compose and format API

[manphiz <manphiz gmail com>]

The compose and format API saves C++ from gettext a lot. And it reminds 
me a similar library of boost::format [1], which basically does the same 
thing, but provides different interfaces. I'm not an expert, but I 
believe the Boost one might be better than yours in the following 2 aspects:

1. format-string specification

boost::format retains the old printf format (%spec), and provides more 
flexible syntax, such as %|spec| which can omit the type-conversion 
character, as well as %N% which plays as place holder, while you were 
using %N as place holder. The lack of printf-like format might results 
in incompatible interfaces with plain printf and might compromises the 
interoperability of format string with other printf-like functions. 
Though they are definitely not good choices, they are still widely used. 
However, you can implement the same thing of course :)

2. operater%

Boost uses operator% to concatenate different part, which is generally 
type safer than variadic function calls, and might provides more 
flexibility in implementation before C++ allows overloading operator,.

Moreover - I think its less important - that boost::format has already 
been used for a while. Providing a similar syntax will of course 
increase the interoperability with many existing code using 
boost::format as well.

Again, I'm not an expert, and I've no rights to judge anything, and your 
library has been written out for quite some time already. But I wish you 
 may consider my proposal, and thanks for your effort :)

[1] http://www.boost.org/libs/format/index.html