Re: gettext for Ada

[Shark8 <onewingedshark@gmail.com>]

On Thursday, November 23, 2017 at 1:25:50 AM UTC-7, G. B. wrote:
> Shark8 wrote:
> 
> > Er... "The strings come from a freely available ISO standard, so they will never change"
> > 
> > So why not enumerate the strings, that way proper cases can be done on
> > either languages and/or locales?
> 
> 
> The set of locales may grow. ‘Last etc. would change.

Why would you use 'Last or 'Succ on languages? -- If you're talking about setting up a generic-system, you'd make special values formal parameters:

Generic
  Type Language is (<>);
  Default,
  Unknown : in Language;
Package Translation_Base is
 --...
End Translation_Base;


Using enumerations also means that you can leverage discriminated records, making a solid foundation for true multilingual applications:

Type Language_String( Language : Ada.Locale.Language; Length : Natural ) is record
  Data : String( 1..Length );
end record;

--...

Package Language_String_Vector is new Ada.Containers.Indefinite_Vectors(
    Index   => Positive,
    Element => Language_String
  );

Subtype Multi_Lingual_Text is Language_String_Vector.Vector;

--...

Procedure Render( Text : Multi_Lingual_Text; Display : Some_Text_Device );