Re: About locale data ... (again)

[Bryce McKinlay]

Guilhem Lavaux wrote:

> As we always need a good locale database for GNU Classpath, I was 
> thinking of a way to get it. The ICU locale converter is only 
> partially satisfying as it does not have any collation rules generator 
> (at least). I've seen that www.openi18n.org[1][2] has begun a new 
> standard file format to interchange locale data. It is purely written 
> in XML form and looks well documented. On IBM[3], we can find the 
> locale database waiting to be converted.
>
> As it is written in XML it should be fairly simple to write a parser 
> in Java for these data.
> Once it is parsed, we can (I hope) all the same generate the Java 
> classes/properties corresponding to our internal representation.
>
> I may start soon (one/two weeks) to build the parser.
>
> Is there someone against it ?


No, I think this is an excellent idea. Its something I've wanted for a 
long time too.

One issue to consider is whether the compiled locale data should be 
represented by properties files or java source files. Currently libgcj's 
locale date uses java files, but this has been a bit inefficient in 
terms of space used in the compiled .so. However, this overhead should 
be reduced with the BC-ABI, so if .class files are preferred for other 
VMs then I wouldn't be opposed to continue doing it this way.

Regards

Bryce