24. новембар 2011. 16.47, Nicholas C. Zakas<standa...@nczconsulting.com> је
написао/ла:
Again, my apologies - I didn't mean to imply that Norbert agreed with any of
this, just that a few ideas have been more solidified in my mind after speaking
with him.
As a web developer who has built large-scale web sites that have been
internationalized to dozens of countries, my main purpose in contributing to
this discussion is to provide feedback on what I would have liked to see in
such an API to make it useful to me.
The current proposal doesn't feel very JavaScript-like, and so I've been trying
to offer alternatives that make it more JavaScript-like and, therefore, more
likely to be used by more developers. I'm a bit concerned that design decisions
seem to have been guided by considering the most complex use cases instead of
the most common.
It is my opinion (and I can only speak for myself) that a single object to
encompass would represent a better API for JavaScript than adding a namespace,
which hasn't been done to this point, and several new types, all of which just
do one thing. That's a very Java-like approach, and I think JavaScript deserves
better.
As I told Norbert, I'm very happy to lend my experience and insights to this process. I
realize I may end up bringing things up that you all have discussed before - but
considering that you did have a single Locale object at one point, I'd like to claim
"great minds" think alike and continue discussing it. :)
Happy Thanksgiving.
-Nicholas
On 11/24/2011 2:44 PM, Norbert Lindenberg wrote:
I didn't agree with this approach, and Nicholas didn't claim that I did :-)
I'm very glad though that Nicholas is taking the time to provide feedback, come
up with his own ideas, and discuss them with us. In the end, the Globalization
API can only be successful if people like him are comfortable using the API in
their projects, and explain it to others so that they're comfortable doing so.
Right now, the feedback from him, Rick, several TC39 members, and others
indicates significant discomfort, so we have some work to do. Some of that work
may be changes to the API, but some may also be better explanation of how to
use the API, directly from applications or in higher-level libraries.
More after Thanksgiving.
Norbert
On Nov 23, 2011, at 15:15 , Nebojša Ćirić wrote:
23. новембар 2011. 14.32, Nicholas C. Zakas<standa...@nczconsulting.com> је
написао/ла:
On 11/23/2011 12:57 PM, Nebojša Ćirić wrote:
Similar approach was proposed (with locale as a top object, others under it)
and I have nothing against it, but there are some issues with your approach:
(code == localeID)
Sorry for being unclear - I didn't intend for this to be a complete alternate
proposal, just a starting point. There are definitely still issues that would
have to be resolved.
I just feel we are going in circles sometimes :). I am surprised Norbert agreed
with this approach - I think he was against top level Locale object.
1. An implementation may support NumberFormat for localeID x, but not support
DateFormat for x (it would need to do a fallback to less specific one, or
default). That's why we have supportedLocaleOf method on each object.
So what you're saying is that there needs to be some way to feature detect
support for number and date formats separately. That could be handled in any
number of ways. One that pops to mind would be
isDateFormatSupported()/isNumberFormatSupported() as an instance method.
That would probably work. We could add more methods in the future - say one
that tells you closest locale to the current one that does support service in
question.
2. How do you convey status of option/locale resolution to the developer? Which
options were resolved and to what value (say I ask for 'islamic' calendar, but
we only have 'gregory' for a given locale). In our current proposal we expose
resolvedOptions accessor on i.e. DateTimeFormat object instance that has
'calendar' property, so a developer can decide what to do.
Thanks, I was having trouble understanding what resolvedOptions was used for.
Could the use case be handled by having a similar object on a Locale instance?
It seems like you could include options for available calendars and anything
else that developers could query against, such as:
var locale = new Locale();
if (locale.supportedOptions.islamicCalendar){
//foo
}
You could also go a more traditional direction (at least in terms of DOM
objects), by doing something like:
Locale.CALENDAR_ISLAMIC = 1;
Locale.CALENDAR_GREGORIAN = 2;
var locale = new Locale();
locale.isSupported(Locale.CALENDAR_ISLAMIC);
I think feature detection is an easily solved problem if everything else is in
place.
Sometimes options can influence each other. For example:
1. Ask for th locale (Thai)
2. There are two calendars available - buddhist and gregory
3. There are two numbering systems available - thai and latin
but only buddhist + thai and gregory + latin combinations are supported.
If you ask locale.isSupported('calendar': 'buddhist') you'll get true. If you
ask locale.isSupported('numberingSystem', 'latin') you'll get true again. If
you try to format date using that combination (thai + latin) you'll get
something you didn't expect.
I would propose sligthly different isSupported method:
locale.returnSupported(serviceName, options), where serviceName is one of
'dateFormat', 'numberFormat', 'collator', options object contains requested
settings (calendar, numbering system, collation options...) and method returns
the object with supported features for a given service.
3. This approach would require internal caching of
collator/dateformatter/numberformatter objects.
That's an implementation detail. I'm more interested in defining an usable and
relatively intuitive API before worrying about optimization.
I agree, it's implementation detail, but you will need to pass format parameter
to each call of .format() method. I don't think that's a big problem. Also I
would move format and option parameters to the last position (can be optional),
so that user can specify only value and rely on defaults.
23. новембар 2011. 12.09, Nicholas C. Zakas<standa...@nczconsulting.com> је
написао/ла:
After meeting with Norbert to discuss the use cases and design decision
rationale, I've come to a different understanding of the goals of the
globalization API. Some things I learned:
1. Augmenting native types with some default locale support may be dangerous. Consider
the case where a single web page displays two modules with different locales. Which one
wins? Therefore, "default" locale behavior for native types is impractical.
2. Locale information is most frequently used for formatting numbers and dates
as well as comparing strings. The locale information doesn't permeate the
entire execution context.
3. Developers are likely to want to define locale information once and then
reuse that multiple times through a script.
Given this, I'd like to propose an alternate approach to the one currently
taken in the API and also different from my initial email. It goes like this:
Have a single, top-level type called Locale defined as:
function Locale(code){
//whatever has to happen to process the code
this.code = code;
}
/*
* Determine if a locale is supported.
* @param code The code to check.
* @return True if supported, false if not.
*/
Locale.isLocaleSupported = function(code){
...
};
/*
* Replaces supportedLocalesOf
* @param code The code to check.
* @return Array of supported locales.
*/
Locale.getSupportedLocales = function(code){
...
};
/*
* Replaces Globalization.Collator
* @param a The first item.
* @param b The second item.
* @param options (Optional) The options to use when comparing.
* @return -1 if a comes before b, 0 if they're equal, 1 otherwise
*/
Locale.prototype.compare = function(a, b, options){
...
};
/*
* Replaces Globalization.NumberFormat
* @param format A pattern format string for outputting the number.
* @param value The value to format.
* @return The number formatted as a string.
*/
Locale.prototype.formatNumber = function(format, value){
...
};
/*
* Replaces Globalization.DateFormat
* @param format A pattern format string for outputting the date.
* @param value The date to format.
* @return The number formatted as a string.
*/
Locale.prototype.formatDate = function(format, value){
...
};
You would then be able to create a single Locale instance and have that be used
in your script. If the constructor is used without an argument, then default
locale information is used:
var locale = new Locale();
If you provide a code, then that is used:
var locale = new Locale("en-us");
If you provide multiple codes, then the first supported one is used:
var locale = new Locale(["en-us", "en-gb"]);
Then, you can use that locale information for the other operations you want to
do:
locale.formatDate("DMYs-short", new Date());
locale.formatNumber("##.##", 55);
locale.compare("foo", "bar");
By the way, not saying this is the format pattern string that should be used,
it's just for discussion.
I like having a single object to deal with instead of multiple for everything
the API is trying to do. It seems a lot more intuitive than needing to manage a
LocaleList that is passed into new instances of NumberFormat and DateFormat all
the time (that's a bunch of housekeeping for developers).
Thoughts?
-Nicholas
On 11/21/2011 11:12 AM, Nicholas C. Zakas wrote:
As promised, more verbose feedback for the Globalization API. My general
feeling is that the API is overly verbose for what it's doing. I'll state my
bias up front: I'm not a fan of introducing a bunch of new types to handle
formatting. I'd much rather have additional methods that perform formatting on
existing objects. My feedback is mostly about eliminating the new constructors
- which has an added bonus of eliminating the Globalization namespace because
there would be only one constructor left: Collator.
1. LocaleList
I'm not sure why this type is necessary. I don't believe that locale resolution
is an expensive operation, and even if it is, I'd expect the implementation to
cache the results of such resolution for later use. I'd just leave this as an
internal construct and instruct developers to use arrays all the time.
2. supportedLocalesOf
I find this method name strange - I've read it several times and am still not sure I
fully understand what it does. Perhaps "getSupportedLocales()" is a better name
for this method? (I always prefer methods begin with verbs.)
3. NumberFormat
Number formatting seems simple enough that it could just be added as a series
of methods on Number.prototype. The three types of formatting (currency,
decimal, percent) could each have their own method. Currency formatting has
relatively few options to specify, so it's method can be:
/*
* Formats the number as if it were currency
* @param code Currency code, e.g., "EUR"
* @param type (Optional) The way to format the currency code, "code",
"symbol" (default),
* @param locales - (Optional) Array of locales to use.
*/
Number.prototype.toCurrencyString = function(code, type, locales) {
...
};
var num = 500;
console.log(num.toCurrencyCode("EUR", "code")); //"EUR 500.00"
Decimal and percent formatting options are slightly different in that they
include significant digits options. For that, I prefer to use a formatting
string rather than the multitude of optional properties as currently defined
(see http://www.exampledepot.com/egs/java.text/FormatNum.html). The formatting
string indicates must-have digits as 0 and optional digits as #, allowing you
to very succinctly specify how you want your number to be output. For example:
/*
* Formats the number as a decimal string.
* @param format Format string indicating max/min significant digits
* @param locales (Optional) Array of locales to use.
*/
Number.prototype.toDecimalString = function(format, locales){
...
};
/*
* Formats the number as a percent string.
* @param format Format string indicating max/min significant digits
* @param locales (Optional) Array of locales to use.
*/
Number.prototype.toPercentString = function(format, locales){
...
};
var num = 1234.567;
console.log(numtoDecimalString("000##.##")); "01234.57"
4. DateTimeFormat
As with NumberFormat, it seems like this could more succinctly be implemented
as a method on Date.prototype. As its easiest:
/*
* Format a date
* @param options The already-defined options for DateTimeFormat
* @param locales (Optional) Array of locales to use.
*/
Date.prototype.toFormatString = function(options, locales){
...
};
In an ideal world, I'd like to see options overloaded so it can be an options
object as specified now or a formatting string. I understand that there was a
sentiment against formatting strings due to their limitations and edge case
errors. However, I'd like to point out that any internationalized web
application is highly likely to already be using formatting strings for dates,
since this is pretty much how every other language handles date formatting.
That means supporting format strings in JavaScript would allow application
developers to reuse the settings they already have. As it stands now, you'd
need to create two different ways of formatting dates for a web app: one for
your server-side language and one for your client-side language (until the day
everything is running on Node.js, of course). I'd prefer my client-side code to
reuse settings and configuration that the server-side code uses, otherwise I
end up with two very different pieces of code doing the exact same thing, and
there be dragons.
-Nicholas
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