Locale Data Markup Language Version 1.0 Released

Ram Viswanadha writes "The Free Standards Group Open Internationalization Initiative (OpenI18N) announced the release of the locale data markup language specification (LDML), Version 1.0."

Comments

YES !!

[Hougaard]

We do need yet another XML based format ! :-)

When do we get MARK UP???

[ka9dgx]

We've been lied to for years... since when can we mark up someone else's Hyper Text? How does this help me mark up someone elses XML?

Where's annotation?

Why do we put up with a crappy hierarchical database eXpansion and Mangling Language?

--Mike--

Half of the work

[Matthias Wiesmann]

I think this is a good initiative, having a single scheme to describe locales can only push for better localisation. One place where this could be very usefull is for web sites. If you could simply upload your locale to web site to get a personalised display it would really be a nice.

One thing that I'm not convinced of is that those locale merge two things: how data is displayed (number, data and currency display), but also how certain words a translated, yes, no, name of days etc... I would prefer to keep both things separated. I tend to use applications with an english localisation, but with number and dates in my locale (swiss french).

I suppose I could design my own locale, but I think translation should be handled in the application's localisation part. If not, you will get mixed results. I have seen to many dialog boxes asking

Do you want to save?
[Oui] [Niet] [Abbrechen]

I find the idea of Europanto funny, but I would prefer avoid it in user-interfaces.

This said, I fear the core problem is not so much the lack of standard, but the fact that application often have text and date behaviour hard-coded, or hard-linked to the localisation (like Apple's mail.app)

By the way, am I the only person that finds it ironic to see the following code in the header of the specification?

<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">
<meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">

Re:Half of the work

[PhilipMatarese]

Hard coding strings is a big problem when it comes to localizing. If I write an app with a strings file containing every word to be displayed:
First, it make maintenance easier. The client sees the demo, and says "we don't call it a username, we call it a login!" or something like that. You just change any strings with username in them to have login in them instead.
Second, you can easily update the language for an International version of the app. Or you can have a directory with several language files and choose which one to use based on preference settings (I think this is pretty common).

I think problems with date/currency type things stem from programmers not using standard packages and methods to deal with these types. For example, I don't want to use a date format object, so I just print day+'/'+month+'/'+year.

I say better localization is always good.

Maybe we could use this to replace 's' with 'z' in localisation, while reading Slashdot in the US.

Re:Half of the work

[superyooser]

Maybe we could use this to replace 's' with 'z' in localisation, while reading Slashdot in the US.

I don't know if I'd prefer that. Taking note of how people spell words gives me a clue about their identity. When I see words like "localisation" and "whilst," it at least it tells me I'm getting a view from a non-American. A commenter in a recent Slashdot journal of one of my friends exclaimed "Mazel Tov!" (Hebrew for "Congratulations"), so I can reasonably assume that he is probably Jewish. If everything was automagically changed to my locale, it would look as if everybody was more like me than they really are. That would be stripping out revealing meta-information.

The good thing about locales, though, is that it gives you fine-grained preferences (if I understand it correctly; I just skimmed over a few paragraphs of the spec page).

internationalize the keyboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

But with limitations:

1. No Unicode
2. 1 character = 1 byte (never 2 bytes)
3. <= # keys of the keyboard

"Math-Esperanto Keyboard" for everybody? xDDD
open4free

WTF!?

[7-Vodka]

Can you please post a short description of what the article is about so you don't leave a bunch of us clueless?

it doesn't take much, just one line explaining what this language is would do.

what?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is less than or equal to the number of keys on the keyboard? I don't follow.

And 1 character = 1 byte? Either that means a much larger byte, or codepages (yay, everyone loves codepages).

Deadlock Detection finally works?!

[NumbThumb]

I think the most interresting change ist this:

These previously unimplemented JVMDI functions have been implemented:

jvmdiError GetOwnedMonitorInfo(jthread thread, JVMDI_owned_monitor_info *infoPtr)

jvmdiError GetCurrentContendedMonitor(jthread thread, jobject *monitorPtr)

Does this mean monitor information is now reported correctly in profiler-dumps and via JPDA? That would be soooo great -- i'm waitng for that for 2 years now. Finding deadlocks using a trial-and-error aproach ist just a pain... Eclipse even has an extra "Threads/Monitors/Deadlocks" view, that just keeps telling me that my VM does not support that feature:(

Does anyone know more?

BTW: don't use the web-installer (window), it's slow. go for the offline version. And you don't need to fill the info form. There is a "continue download" link at the top.

Re:Deadlock Detection finally works?!

[NumbThumb]

Moderation request: Please mod this off topick. This was supposed to show up at the "Java 1.4.2 releaseds" discussion. Sorry for that. Tabbed Browsing has it's dangers;-)

(ARRRG! damn the 2 minute rule)