Re: [Gaim-i18n] Re: Translatable strftime() format strings?

[Bjoern V. <bj...@cs...>]

Richard Laager <rl...@wi...> wrote:

> I imagine the correct approach is this:
>
> 1. Pass the format string from Gaim to gettext().
> 2. Convert the output from gettext() from UTF-8 to locale format.
> 3. Pass the translated, locale-converted string to strftime().
> 4. Convert the output of strftime() back to UTF-8.
>
> Thoughts?

I see one problem with this approach. The step 2 may not be possible
without loosing information, if the user sets an unsuitable locale
charset.

I mean, that a conversion from UTF-8 to locale charset and back to UTF-8
may change the message:

message !=3D conv(conv(message, UTF-8, localecharset), localecharset, UTF-8=
)

I do not know, if this is an issue in many languages and locale setups.

But already in German it can be an issue:

   In normal case the locale charset (LC_CTYPE) and the language
   selection (LC_MESSAGES or LANG) should have compatible values. For
   instance the locale German/Germany (de_DE) has the following
   compatible charsets in (SuSE) Linux: ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-15 and
   UTF-8. But it's also possible to use "C" or "POSIX" as the charset
   (LC_CTYPE) selection for German. Then a word like Erd=F6l (lets say in
   UTF-8) is converted to Erd"ol (in ASCII/POSIX). Unfortunately the
   conversation from Erd"ol to another charset (for instance UTF-8) is
   always Erd"ol, but not Erd=F6l (original).

As a result the user may see the date/time strings with garbage in some
locale setups.

I see the following better solutions (which still have problems):

1) Set LC_CTYPE=3DUTF-8 within Gaim. The only problem here is to find the
    "UTF-8" name (LC_CTYPE value) for each system. On Linux it's "utf8",
    on Solaris and FreeBSD it's "UTF-8". I prefer this solution because
    of it's simplicity. But where do we found the necessare UTF-8 locale
    names? Ethan Blanton wrote about this problem.

2) Usage of date/time strings which only have ASCII-value placeholders
    (regardless of locale). This means, that we can not use names for
    days, months etc. (%A, %B, ...) but numbers (%d, %m, ...). This
    date/time strings for strftime() should be still marked as
    translatable for the reasons which were explained by Ambrose Li.

    Example:

    English (original):   _("%m/%d/%Y %H:%M") -> 02/11/2006 22:27
    German  (translated): "%d.%m.%Y %H:%M"    -> 11.02.2006 22:27

    With this solution we do not need a character conversation. The user
    can pass UTF-8 via gettext() into strftime(). strftime() fills the
    placeholders with ASCII characters (numbers) into the UTF-8 date/time
    string.

The attached patch changes the two problematic date/time strings
according to solution 2. Please test this patch and write your comments.

Regards, Bj=F6rn