From: bill_kempf (williamkempf_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-01-31 12:53:25
--- In boost_at_y..., Darin Adler <darin_at_b...> wrote:
> On 1/31/02 7:31 AM, "bill_kempf" <williamkempf_at_h...> wrote:
>
> > I thought of that, but honestly see no problems here. The width
is
> > passed to the manipulator in my example and could as easily be
> > fetched out of a locale specific database as you'd fetch out the
> > format string.
>
> You seem to misunderstand the constraints here. There's already a
> locale-specific string database. Imagining another putative locale-
specific
> database is a big step.
>
> Perhaps you see no problems here because you haven't dealt with this
> recently. I find that the translators have a much easier time
localizing a
> single string than localizing a number of separate interdependent
pieces.
> And it's non trivial to have more than one locale-specific database.
No, I've dealt with this issue a lot. Maybe we just have different
perspectives here though. Generally, I don't think that formatting
issues should be of any concern to a translator. Usually the
formatting concerns are either something specific to programming
needs (such as fitting the data within a given column size) that are
irrelevant to a translator, or are based on requirements for the type
and the locale, such as the width required to represent a date. I've
never encountered a situation where a translator would need to
specify any formatting information, and so including it in the string
makes the translator's job more difficult.
Bill Kempf
Bill Kempf