why kdelibs?

[John Layt]

On Friday 29 October 2010 17:11:35 Kevin Ottens wrote:
> On Friday 29 October 2010 18:01:30 Chusslove Illich wrote:
> > >> [: Stephen Kelly :]
> > >> KLocale: More powerful i18n than QObject::tr and friends. Based on
> > >> gettext.
> > > 
> > > [: Kevin Ottens :]
> > > Why not push its features in Qt itself?
> > 
> > Gettext itself (format, runtime, tools) is a feature. So "pushing
> > features" would, for one, mean replacing Qt's current translation
> > systems with a Gettext-based one. Which is obviously not going to happen
> > (since it didn't happen in the first place).
> > 
> > The most important feature specific to KDE on top of Gettext is
> > Transcript ( http://techbase.kde.org/Localization/Concepts/Transcript).
> > Gettext is not a prerequisite here, so it could be added to Qt system as
> > it is. But this won't happen either, as it is too complicated for target
> > clients (based on private communication with Oswald).
> 
> Fair enough (although it ignores date formatting and so on I think... I'm
> far from being a localization savvy person). ;-)
> 
> Note that my point was more about doing this kind of work and communication
> in a more systematic manner though (I'm actually glad that you apparently
> did it for the translation handling). I seriously doubt we do it
> everywhere we could.

The settings and formats stuff in QLocale and QDate and everything associated 
could use a lot of improvement.  While Qt uses the Unicode CLDR locale 
standard on *nix and wraps around Mac and Windows on those platforms (both now 
also using CLDR), their support is no-where near complete, and I've not really 
noticed any efforts to improve things in the Qt4 series either.  Just look at 
the few date format options and total lack of calendar support when Windows 
and Mac both support it.  

Of course, we use our own variation on POSIX locales, and Gnome uses POSIX 
locales exclusively, so there are some large gaps there that will be hard to 
bridge.  For now, I am trying to build Mac and Win backends, and later Gnome 
and QLocale compatible modes, but it's a slow process.

I do hope Qt come knocking come Qt 5, I'd love to help sort it out, but if my 
experiences with printing is anything to go by I'm not holding my breath.  It 
really does depend on how well the open governance model works out and how 
willing Qt really is to take on major ideas and code drops from the community, 
rather than just bug-fixes.

John.