[Fwd: Re: ICU ResourceBundles for ext/unicode]

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: ICU ResourceBundles for ext/unicode Date: Sun, 31 Dec 2006 13:11:26 +0100 From: Michael Wallner <mike@php.net> To: Norbert Lindenberg <Norbert.Lindenberg@yahoo-inc.com> CC: Andrei Zmievski <andrei@gravitonic.com> Newsgroups: php.i18n References: <A759ED92-D191-4F94-A72D-C026C2E98127@yahoo-inc.com> Norbert Lindenberg wrote: > Hi all, Hi Norbert! > The ICU style of resource bundles is Unicode based, but also seems more > complicated than desirable for PHP. It's designed for a statically typed > environment and requires compilation, neither of which fit in well with > PHP. That's probably true. But the same applies to the past and gettext. > > I'd rather start with Java properties files, the simplest and most > widely used form of Java resource files. I'd adapt them to PHP 6 by > switching their encoding to UTF-8, adopting heredocs, and simplifying > their syntax. I'd drop the secondary fallback mechanism, in which > resource bundles can inherit individual resources from other bundles. > This is an optimization to reduce the size of bundles at the expense of > runtime overhead and additional work in creating the bundles. The > additional step of finding common resources and moving them to shared > bundles is rarely made in normal localization processes, and the space > savings don't matter much for PHP, where bundles remain on the server. > Dropping the secondary fallback also means that we can simplify the > resource bundle to just an array. > [...] > What do you think? The idea is quite confusing to me... I don't see any compelling reasons to create a new file format and write a parser for it from scratch. I could understand if you suggested to implement a parser for plaintext ICU resourcebundle templates, which would extinct the compilation process and wouldn't benefit from the fallback mechanism. I guess we could even exploit icu/source/tools/genrb/parse.c for that matter. Regards, -- Michael -- Michael