Re: Random thoughts

[danilo gnome org (Danilo Šegan)]

Yesterday at 16:12, Roozbeh Pournader wrote:

> 1) Do we want this as a separate library or a part of, say, glib?

Separate: we're still on the experimental grounds, so we want to be
able to play with the APIs and such, and glib, as a pretty stable
library, is not the place for it.  It's easy to merge it later on if
we... 

> 2) Do we want to use glib data types?

I'd lean for YES, but now that Bruno is proposing merging all this
with glocale, it pretty much influences the decision.

> 3) Do we want to invent a binary format to store our locale data, like
> glibc does?

We'll definitely need some mmap()-able format: whether we'll create
such a cache automatically or in-front with some tool is not really
important.

> 4) Do we want to do pure C?

Well, yes for the library, no for everything else.

> * Doing it in real time, so the time format in the clock applet changes
> when the user changes the default format.

This shouldn't be a problem for Gnome applications which use GConf.
Per-user configuration in Gnome should use "gconf backend" IMHO.  Or,
at least it could be done with file monitoring.

> * Doing the Right Thing for users who login under different locales.
> Should we keep their time format setting for the new locale, or did they
> only set it for the locale they were using previously?

It doesn't matter: whatever choice we make it's not going to be
completely correct, so I don't think we need to worry about this one,
but rather just do the one thing and be over with it.

> 6) How could we define something that could start to be used by GNOME
> applications immediately (not in the 2.12 release of course) and could
> be expanded to a usable library progressively?

g_locale_format_date(D_FMT_LONG, timestamp);

> 7) How do we see the APIs?
>
> I believe we should do them with keeping one eye on what CLDR provides,
> and another for what the applications need. 

Yeah, I can imagine two sets of APIs: user API (i.e. the one
programmers would use to get localised stuff showing for real users)
and configuration API (the one configuration programs would use to set
preferences for system and user).

> 9) Do we want per-application configuration and a multi-locale desktop?
> Like the user being able to use the locale configuration tool to set his
> file navigator and clock applet use different data formats?
>
> My answer: While this looks like a nice challenge, let's not think about
> it. It's hard even without that.

Agreed (and otherwise, where I didn't respond, I didn't have anything
to add :).

Cheers,
Danilo