Re: Strings again

Roger Binns wrote:

> I just want to make it clear that a scheme such as _() or equivalents
> only does a tiny part of the job.  In particular you have to also deal
> with the issue that order of formatting changes.  As a simple example
> you may say this in english:
>
>   "%d of %d items imported" % (current, total)
>
> Whereas in another language it would be written the other way round:
>
>   "jkjh dfgd %d gfdg %d" % (total, current)
>
> The latter is common in Japanese.
>
> The above can't be simply resolved by looking up the format string.
> (Yes, you could supply dicts and other stuff but people don't and
> before you know it, your standard library is full of stuff that
> can't be internationalised/localised).

Are you familiar with Prothon's replacement for % ?  Check out:
http://prothon.org/wiki?pagename=String.fmt%28%29

It can easily handle the problem you pose here since it offers positional
numbering:

O>> current = 10; total = 50
O>> "We have shipped {0} of the {1} total".fmt(current,total)
We have shipped 10 of the 50 total
O>> "Of the {1} total, {0} have been shipped".fmt(current,total)
Of the 50 total, 10 have been shipped
O>>

> What I was suggesting was that the code looks as close as possible
> to this:
>
>    print MAGIC, current, total
>
> And behind the scenes the lookup happens (with defaults or whatever).
> But that also allows you to suddenly do a lot better.  For example
> shouldn't I trivially be able to make it output in XML or HTML
> or whatever format is common next year without having to write
> seperate code for each output format?  MAGIC would just "do the
> right thing" including doing the right output format, as well
> as deal with the localisation issues.  The reason for making it
> compulsory would be to ensure that all code does the outputting
> "correctly".

Our new String.fmt() uses the str_ function to process the spec.  It could
output in xml or html.

> Here is the true test.  Take a sample "Hello World" program
> and also have it output todays date, and how many days of the
> month have passed as a percentage.
>
> How much extra effort (just on the coding side) is it to also
> output in German?  Japanese? Hebrew? Arabic?  HTML?  XML?
> teletype?
>
> For the next generation of languages I believe the answer
> is going to be "none".

I think the combination of our String.fmt() and the proposed _"xxx" format
strings could do the job, once the other elements of Prothon (html, xml,
date functions, etc.) are complete.