[Python-Dev] Internationalization Toolkit

[Guido van Rossum]

Andy,

Thanks a bundle for your case study and your toolkit proposal.  It's
interesting that you haven't touched upon internationalization of user
interfaces (dialog text, menus etc.) -- that's a whole nother can of
worms.

Marc-Andre Lemburg has a proposal for work that I'm asking him to do
(under pressure from HP who want Python i18n badly and are willing to
pay!): http://starship.skyport.net/~lemburg/unicode-proposal.txt

I think his proposal will go a long way towards your toolkit.  I hope
to hear soon from anybody who disagrees with Marc-Andre's proposal,
because without opposition this is going to be Python 1.6's offering
for i18n...  (Together with a new Unicode regex engine by /F.)

One specific question: in you discussion of typed strings, I'm not
sure why you couldn't convert everything to Unicode and be done with
it.  I have a feeling that the answer is somewhere in your case study
-- maybe you can elaborate?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)