Re: Components

[Bruno Haible <bruno clisp org>]

Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
> I'm trying to come up
> with a map of completely isolated components, that may even have
> different licenses.  For example, the whole user-configurability
> should be on top of the basic functionality, and on top of that,
> gconf should be a detail.  On the backend side, It may be
> possible for example to have the CLDR wrapper with a wider
> license, most probably borrowed from ICU.  I'm also thinking
> about Unicode Character Database and regular expression
> engines...

Complete agreement. A set of libraries is the way to go, in order not
to repeat the "all intermixed" experience of ICU.

What is precisely in the "whole user-configurability" part? Is it some
GNOME GUI part, or the on-demand use of the cooker that we talked about
earlier?

Code for Unicode Character Database already exists under LGPL: see
the libunictype/ and libuniname/ part of
  http://www.haible.de/bruno/gnu/libunistring-0.0.tar.gz
It could certainly become part of this project.

ICU reads its XML files through a simple XML parser of its own, written
in C++. We can't reuse that directly, since we want to stick with C.

> >   I would very much like it to be a GNU project ...
> That's what I was going to suggest.

Good, fine.

> what about GNU gettext becoming one
> part of the project?  I mean, gettext is probably quite smaller
> in the scope and complexity, compared to the whole picture we are
> building here, right?

gettext is already quite big, and has a gettext-tools/ subdirectory.
Whereas I would find it nice if this project could focus on libraries.
So my vote is for separate projects.

> the sudden jump
> in the size and complexity of GNU gettext may not be as welcome
> as you may think.

Agreed.

> For now we need a CVS repository and a
> bugzilla maybe.  Both are available readily at GNOME.  I cannot
> figure out where gettext is developed.  Apparently not Savannah.

Gettext currently is in a CVS at sourceware.redhat.com; it will move
to Savannah.

I'd suggest to move the non-GNOME specific part of this project to
Savannah,
  1. to increase its visibility,
  2. to ensure that it doesn't accidentally use glib.
But the gconf related part I'd see to be developed in GNOME.
Do we lose much of the GNOME user community by having the CVS and
bugtracker at Savannah rather than at gnome.org?

> > * What shall be the name of the library? Is "glocale" OK with everyone?
>
> glocale is of course the mechanical name.  I prefer something
> smarter :).  We better not use the gl_ prefix BTW, suggests
> OpenGL way too much.  "GLU Locale and Unicode support library" is
> another geeky choice ;).  Everybody look for a good name.

"GLU" is already taken: it's the OpenGL Utility Library :-(
Other proposals?

Bruno