[jboss-dev] jboss i18n and localization (l10n)

[Jason T. Greene]

Max Rydahl Andersen wrote:
>>> huh ? java localization has plural handling: 
>>> http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/i18n/format/choiceFormat.html
>>
>> But this requires actually writing a little code to handle that.
>> Gettext .po files can handle plurals directly without needing to
>> write any extra code by hand.
> 
> okey...that's a nice thing but in the big picture I would say it's a 
> minor one.
> 

The problem is, as I mentioned some languages have more forms than just 
2 (singular and plural) noun forms, The ChoiceFormat approach would 
require either a) application knowledge of the language, which is a 
broken abstraction or b) a property lookup for all numbers 1-10 (not 
practical).

Perhaps this isn't important for the languages we are targeting. I just 
wanted to point out that gettext is actually a well thought out framework.

-Jason

-- 
Jason T. Greene
Lead, POJO Cache
JBoss, a division of Red Hat