[Mono-dev] Why do we need separate I18N assemblies?

[Kornél Pál]

Hi,

>I once dreamed to change encoding implementation like you but
> I noticed that it helps few people other than my personal
> satisfaction and spends too much time just for such a niche
> (at least for me).
>
> When you split conversion map data from I18N.*.dll which is mostly
> extraneous for people who don't use those them, feel free to try
> merging it into mscorlib. Otherwise, I don't like your idea.

Originally I was thinking of simply moving Encoding classes to corlib but 
you and Jonathan are right that there are cases when it has advantages if 
such large data can be excluded.

But you are right this would need a lot of time...

> Why do you quote Microsoft mscorlib size here? It is far from
> something to do with it. Stop making misleading. To my understanding
> they have different files for encoding maps (*.nlp).

I just tried to glorify the size of our mscorlib.:) If we add the size of 
I18N assemblies to the size of our mscorlib our is sill smaller than 
Microsoft's one. (And you are right that it has external dependencies so the 
difference may be even more.) As long as our mscorlib can do the same as 
their this only means that ours is better and nothing more.:)

> "Mono should be MS.NET compatible" is simply wrong as usual.
> We have broader supported environment which requires different
> thinking.

>From http://www.mono-project.com/FAQ:_General:
"Its objective is to enable UNIX developers to build and deploy 
cross-platform .NET Applications."

And note that this is why I like Mono.:) This goal cannot be achieved 
without MS.NET compatibility. Of course I don't mean compatiblitiy at any 
costs. Or for example I don't like the bug compatibility at any cost policy 
of MWF altough I admit that it helps run GUI applications that often relay 
on weird SWF behaviours.

Kornél