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The thread "[erlang-questions] utf-8 PB" in the erlang mailing list
(archive) during 2010-06-16/17/18 may be of interest to you.<br>
I (Håkan Stenholm) wrote a bunch of replies about using gettext and
.po files in that thread. <br>
<br>
I used to work with internationalization/localization issues at
Klarna back in 2005-2010, but not having worked there (or with
erlang) since 2010-04 makes me fairly useless as a source for
current information.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 2011-07-14 16.46, Alex Arnon wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAD-zBD7MKBy5MuDFEpz8XjrWr55mrCrXJAgGVYfjgSKSucoqAg@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr"><br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 3:33 PM,
Richard Carlsson <span dir="ltr"><<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:carlsson.richard@gmail.com">carlsson.richard@gmail.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt
0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);
padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">On 07/13/2011 09:19 PM, Alex Arnon wrote:<br>
</div>
<div class="im">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt
0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);
padding-left: 1ex;">
We're building a nontrivial Erlang application, which
will provide a<br>
potentially high-volume, public RESTful Web Service. As
part of the API,<br>
we will be providing both informative text (status,
labels, layout<br>
templates) and error messages. A twofold question, then,
to the<br>
experienced Grandmasters in the audience:<br>
1. How have you implemented localization of text? This
includes<br>
parameterized format strings.<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
</div>
At Klarna we are using (and maintaining) the gettext
library, and it works very well. You'll find the latest
version at <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://github.com/etnt/gettext" target="_blank">https://github.com/etnt/gettext</a>
- the version at Jungerl is very much out of date.<br>
<br>
In particular, you'll probably want to use the new (not yet
documented) macro ?STXT(...) instead of the ?TXT(...) macro.
This is less error prone, since the fields and their meaning
are more easily identified and do not have to be listed in
order of occurrence. For example:<br>
<br>
?STXT("Hello, $name$! Today's date is $date$ and the time
is $time$.",<br>
[{date, current_date_as_string()},<br>
{time, current_time_as_string(),<br>
{name, customer_name(CustomerID)}])<br>
<br>
For the documentation (not very up to date, sorry), run
'make docs' and open doc/index.html in a browser.<br>
<br>
Tobbe also made some support for gettext in rebar:<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.redhoterlang.com/entry/138dc1b1f8720f5c4f38864e4f0c338f"
target="_blank">http://www.redhoterlang.com/entry/138dc1b1f8720f5c4f38864e4f0c338f</a><br>
<br>
To make it easier to actually get the translations into the
system, or update translations as the original text changes,
you may also want to use the Polish tool:<br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.redhoterlang.com/entry/8af2641026c0dfa27e54cb0da57eb392"
target="_blank">http://www.redhoterlang.com/entry/8af2641026c0dfa27e54cb0da57eb392</a><br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdhE2YOkBCU"
target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdhE2YOkBCU</a><br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.redhoterlang.com/entry/98951c7196e0d91999bb238de5defe47"
target="_blank">http://www.redhoterlang.com/entry/98951c7196e0d91999bb238de5defe47</a>
<div class="im"><br>
<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
Thank you, this looks promising!<br>
<br>
<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt
0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);
padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt
0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);
padding-left: 1ex;">
2. Has anyone used composite error values? For example,
instead of<br>
{error, badarg}, use {error, {badarg, [{arg,
ArgumentName}, {message,<br>
LocalizedMessageId}, {message_args, [...]}... Should we
steer clear of<br>
these, and if so, what alternative would you suggest?<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
</div>
Who is expected to read these messages? End users, or
developers? For developers, it's better if the message is in
plain English. First, you may have people from different
countries working on your code. Second, it's harder to
google for the error message if the one you got was in
Spanish, but the only people who have previously reported
the problem got their messages in German. At the very least,
always provide a summary or short identifier in English.<br>
<font color="#888888">
<br>
/Richard<br>
</font></blockquote>
</div>
<br>
I was thinking of two purposes for the structured Reason:<br>
1. The error handling code - which may receive extra information
regarding the error itself.<br>
2. Logging code - the handling code can forward the error to a
logger, with attached message format + args etc.<br>
Localization of the message is probably pointless, I agree - I
kind of overloaded [2] with [1]. :)<br>
<br>
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