[Mono-devel-list] [PATCH] Reworked unified Locale classes

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hello,

> I know that gettext () is widely spreaded on Linux but this does not have to
> mean that it is the best solution and the Class Library has it's own
> infrastructure for globalization using identifier based resources and
> culture based resource files.

I have yet to be convinced that there are any benefits in using the
identifier-based lookup of strings as opposed to the gettext-like
system.

To summarize:

	* Gettext is well understood in the Linux world.

	* There are existing tools to extract strings to be
	  internationalized.

	* There are plenty of localization tools: Emacs modes,
	  GUI editors, web-based collaboration frameworks.

	* Rosetta also has direct support for handling conflicts,
	  applying editorial control, pulling translations from
	  multiple projects to make translations suggestions.

I think that identified-based frameworks have problems:

	* They require each identifier to be documented (we
	  need to do more work to start today).

	* If the documentation is not good enough, then
	  contributors must read the source code to figure out
	  what the problem is.

	* It is not clear when those keys require arguments, it
	  is common to see in the framework errors that are 
	  lacking information, I do not remember one right now,
	  but they look like this:

		Invalid method `'

	  Where the maintainer did not know that an argument was
	  expected.

Miguel.