Re: New external dependecy request (ICU)

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 02:12:24PM +0100, Carlos Perell? Mar?n wrote:
> I'm back to my initial idea of develop my own library based on iso-codes
> database (extending it).
> 
> As Daniel told here (I did not look at that, my fault), the libicu
> library size is 7Mb, without translations!!!, the translations are +4Mb
> 
> The ideal solution will be that all libc libraries added this
> information, that's true, but if we add it now, it cannot be used until
> that version becomes widely used.
> 
> For example, to get the same functionality icu gives but using libc +
> gettext + extra library we need to I'm evaluating now the possibility to
> use setlocale to retrieve other languages information, but it only works
> if it's a single thread application. setlocale is not multithread safe.
> 
> Now, since glibc 2.3.0 we have a new function called uselocale, that
> fixes that problem but we can only use it with recent systems and only
> with glibc. What happens with *BSD, Solaris and "put here your preferred
> nonglibc system"? How could we get it?

While it would indeed be nice to have a more powerful locale system
icu does not seem like the best way to do that right now.  Its just
too damn large for what is essentially a glib level dependency.

Nor do I think we should add it to just the proposed capplet.  Do we
have any notion of which pieces of icu are useful ?  Potentially
using an approach similar to mono and just extracting that data.