Re: [stellation-res] Stellation status

["Jonathan Gossage" <jonathan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark C. Chu-Carroll" <mcc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Stellation-res" <stellation-res@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, November 24, 2002 3:18 PM
Subject: Re: [stellation-res] Stellation status


> On Sat, 2002-11-23 at 06:55, Rodolfo M.Raya wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > After a long absence I'm in contact again.
> >
> > I've been reading all the messages since I left my house about 3
> > months ago and this is the first opportunity I have to participate
> > again.
>
> Welcome back!
>
> > I remember a couple of messages about international users of
> > Stellation. I may change the map quite a lot these days as I'm
> > currently working in Thailand and plan to use it here, in Singapore
> > and Beijing as soon as there is a stable release that you can
> > recommend. I18n is not a problem now, but in a near future Stellation
> > will be used in Korea too and it will be a major issue.
>
> Jonathan looked at doing i18n, and to do it full-bore all through the
> code was incredibly complicated. So we decided, at the time, to put it
> off until there was someone who really needed it.
>
> My first question, before we get into any more detail, is how far
> does the internationalization need to go? There's a bunch of
> options:
>
> (1) Be able to deal with international data. That is, make sure that
>   all artifacts, comments, labels, names, etc., all work even in
>   non-latin character sets. Since Java is working in UTF-8, as long as
>   the databases can handle UTF-8 characters correctly, we're already
>   there. But this requires testing to be sure in all the DBs - do you
>   have any good UTF-8 non-latin data that you can give us for testing?
>
> (2) Everything in (1) plus have all system messages be in translatable
>   resources. Java and Eclipse both provide a lot of support for this,
>   but it's still difficult.
>
> (3) Everything in (2) plus have all command names and options also be
>   in translatable resources.

I believe that doing (2) and (3) properly requires a tool that is not
currently available to my knowledge that would both automate the conversion
process and also make the process of adding new internationalizable strings
as easy as simply typing them. However, such a tool would need to be written
as an Eclipse plugin which would make life somewhat difficult for the
command line folks, or which would complicate release procedures.

The Eclipse folks have written a tool that does part, but not all of the
job. It works, but I was less than enchanted with the human factors and
general usability. In any case it did not address the entire problem. If it
looks as if there may be significant I8N demand during the early life of
Stellation I could devote my time to this problem. We should remember that
Asia is probably the fastest growing area on the planet with regard to new
developers.
>
> My opinion is that right now, (3) is probably not doable. Jonathan's
> experiments with pulling all string literals out into translatable
> resources showed what was involved. I think coping with it is just too
> much complexity for us right now.
>
> (2) we could do if it was really necessary, but we'd need you to really
> dig in and help.
>
> > I'm worried because I will need to support Windows and Linux users
> > alike. Is the Windows port already working?
>
> We're working on it. Jonathan Gossage has done a lot of work on fixing
> the windows problems, and those of us at IBM will also be looking at it
> as we head for our alpha release, which we hope to do some time in
> december.
>
>
> > I will make all necessary changes to use Firebird on Windows and
> > Linux. But I don't know what needs to be done. Can anybody draft a
> > list of adjustments?
>
> For Linux, you should be able to just make sure that the
> FirebirdDatabase class in org.eclipse.stellation.repos.database is
> correct. Then just write some docs on how to set up Firebird so
> that the database is ready for Stellation to connect and create
> a repository.
>
> > As I'm behind firewalls most of the time I don't have a current
> > version from CVS. I hope to be able to get one soon and compile it
> > without problems.
>
> It would be best if you could get CVS access. We're working on setting
> up regular builds, so if there's no way around the firewall, you but
> your life will be easier if you can just do CVS updates from Eclipse.
>
> -Mark
>
> --


Regards

Jonathan

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