[Gardeners] Lisp and application localization

[Marco Antoniotti]

On Dec 19, 2005, at 1:53 PM, JC Helary wrote:

>>> I don't know if there is an already existing framework for lisp
>>> application localizations/documentation translation. If there is I'd
>> Nope.  No standard here.
>
>>> For ease of use, the file would be in unicode (which means anything
>>> from supporting the unicode character set to being encoded in utf-8
>>> or 16) and could be easily formatted as a XLIFF file (with tools
>>> existing within this l18n framework).
>> The CL standard does not know about Unicode and friends and different
>> implementations treat such things (when they do) in different way.
>
>>> Also documentation (ie not strictly speaking GUI data) would be in a
>>> format that can similarly be handled by existing CAT tools (xhtml for
>>> ex).
>> XML is S-expression in a drag! :)
>
> Looks like there is indeed some gardening to do :)
>
> Are there projects here going to deal with unicode/xml/practical data
> extraction from the code ?

This is underspecified.  What do you mean exactly?

>
> What you wrote is kind of scary... All the localization/translation
> memory standards are xml/unicode based, they all pretty much depend
> on data parsing/filtering to xml based formats, and that is what
> translators have to deal with pretty much on a daily basis...

Unicode et similia and XML are orthogonal concerns.   You can have XML 
(*) manipulation (look around for the CL-XML or CXML libraries on 
common-lisp.net plus a godzillion other ones I forgot) without Unicode 
etc.  These libraries are quite portable.

Getting Unicode et similia to work *portably* is instead another game 
altogether.  This is where things hit the impedance of having several 
implementors working on the same language (**)

Cheers
Marco

(*) Again, XML *is* S-expressions in a drag. :)
(**) Before somebody points out that "maybe we should all concentrate 
on a single implementation and follow the Perl/Python/Ruby/... path" 
let me state that this is (1) unsatisfactory - at least to me - and (2) 
this will not make the commercial implementations go away in any case.



--
Marco Antoniotti
New York, NY, U.S.A.