On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 8:04 PM, Eli Barzilay <[email protected]> wrote: > On Apr 22, Matthias Felleisen wrote: >> Having said that, I am wondering how Java apps are localized. Anyone >> know? > > IIUC, it's very similar to the string-constants library, with one big > difference, which is (IMO) a design problem with string-constants... > The difference is that each application has its own set of strings, > instead of a single repository. The problem is that the current > collection of strings is "mostly drscheme", with some tools that are > part of its gui -- and this creates a dependency bottleneck. Ignoring > the issue of whether it's good or not to localize error messages > without localizing the languae's identifiers, a more obvious way to > see the problem is if someone wants to write a DrScheme extension and > make it use different strings -- with the current design, the only way > to get that is to add the new strings to the central pool, which > doesn't make much sense. > > "Fixing" the current string-constants should probably be done roughly > as a generalization of the core language selection mechanism and macro > into a new library, then make the current string-constant library use > that. If/when that's done, it will be possible to split the constants > into the different applications. > > There is a problem with that though -- translation work becomes more > difficult to do, since there are more than one file to track down.
fwiw, the string constants library started out for just a single app. So the above (modulo the problem you mention) is a natural step in its evolution. Robby _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: http://list.cs.brown.edu/mailman/listinfo/plt-dev
