One important aspect of internationalization is of course the language used in error messages, documentation strings etc. But with this project we will provide tools for all other aspects of internationalization as well. To get an idea of what we are aiming for, here is a partial list of other tools we are thinking of providing:
- Showing dates. This is a complex issue because it not only involves the format of a date, but also the precision. For example, it is probably not useful to provide more precision for the time an email was sent than down to the minute.
- Measuring weight. There are three important aspects here, namely the type of object that is being measured, the unit to be used, and the precision. For instance, in the UK, for measuring the weight of people, some people like to use the units "stones" and "pounds" for this purpose, and it is not useful to give more than one or two digits of precision for the pounds.
- Measuring temperature. The same three aspects are involved as with weight units. Some people might want to use degrees Fahrenheit for measuring oven temperature, and it is not useful to have more precision than 10 degrees. The same person might want to show the temperature of liquid nitrogen in Kelvin.
- Names of physical quantities. Even if English is used, some people (including myself) do not like names of physical quantities that tie them to a particular unit of measure, such as voltage, mileage, amperage, wattage, etc. In addition, such quantities can become ambiguous, because there might be several quantities that use the same unit, such as length, height, width, or distance. We intend to provide tools that allow programmers to configure what names of quantities are used.
- Etc.
License: FreeBSD