Re: Fw: Re: OpenLDAP To Do List

["Kurt D. Zeilenga" <Kurt@OpenLDAP.org>]

At 04:57 AM 2002-01-15, Volkov Serge wrote:
>>> Implement localization
>>
>>What it mean? May be I start solve this project
>>If it mean to translate all messages and client interfaces to native languages?

Well, as there is so much to do, it's hard to say exactly what
is meant here.  But, basically, the task is to provide support
for localized messages (here I use the term generically).

Here are some examples:
The client APIs should return localized messages (based upon
locale of the application).  Commands should return localized
messages to the user (at the keyboard) (based upon locale of
the user).  The LDAP server should be capable of returning
localized messages to LDAP clients based upon configuration
or information passed from the client.

An initial commit was made to allow use of localized
messages in API error messages.  However, we do not have
any catalogs of messages nor an infrastructure to manage
these catalogs.

An "infrastructure" is needed.  It is desirable to have
only one source file for each language and then to use
this file to generate (using platform specific tools)
the catalogs to support all the locales using that language.
The source file needs to be in some universal character
set/encoding (UTF-8 encoded Unicode) which is then
transliterated into all the character set/encoding catalogs
for use with the user's (or application's) locale.  Of course,
for protocol messages, we can use the UTF-8 encoded Unicode
catalog derived from the source file.

I see the next step as constructing this infrastructure,
using the existing API localization code as the test case.
But I note that my knowledge and experience in this area is
limited.  Hence, I will gladly defer the design and
implementation of localization support to others who are
more knowledgeable and experienced in this area.

Kurt