Re: ANN: ZanyBlue.Text, Localization Support for Ada

[Michael R <michael@zanyblue.com>]

On Nov 22, 2:19 am, Michael R <mich...@zanyblue.com> wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> This is the first release of the ZanyBlue Ada packages.  This release
> includes the Text package which support localization of Ada
> applications
> with Java style message formatting and .properties files.  The
> released
> files are available at
>
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/zanyblue/files/
>
> There are two downloadable files:
>
> 1) The core release files: zanyblue-0.1.0b-r1663.tar.gz
> 2) Support files for testing (AUnit) and regneration of the built-in
>    localizations (CLDR) zanyblue-0.1.0b-r1663-libs3rd.tar.gz
>
> The primary dev environment is Unix but has been tested on Windows.
>
> Take care,
> Michael.
>
> The readme is:
>
> The ZanyBlue.Text Package
> -------------------------
>
> ZanyBlue.Text is an Ada 2005 package supporting localization support
> in Ada
> by allowing the externalization of application messages into a
> properties
> file which can be localized into additional languages, similar to
> Java.
> The localized files include the locale string in the file name, e.g.,
> the
> file "zbmcompile.properties" is localized to
> "zbmcompile_fr.properties" in
> French.
>
> The locale string is
>
> * A language abbreviation (2 or 3 alpha-numeric characters), e.g.,
> "en" for
>   English, "zh" for Chinese, "cop" for Coptic, etc.
> * A script abbreviation (4 alpha-numeric characters), e.g., "Latn" for
> Latin,
>   "Hant" for Traditional Han, "Hebr" for Hebrew, etc.
> * A territory abbreviation (2 or 3 alpha-numeric characters), e.g.,
> "US" for
>   US, "CN" for China, "142" for Asia, etc.
>
> All components are optional, giving locale strings "" for the base
> locale,
> "en" for English, "zh_Hant" for Traditional Chinese, "zh_TW" for
> Chinese
> in Taiwan (also Traditional Chinese), and "zh_Hant_TW".
>
> The externalized .properties files are compiled to an Ada 2005 package
> containing the application strings (including localized strings) to be
> compiled into an application.  The selection of locale by
> ZanyBlue.Text
> is based on a locale argument which defaults to the locale string
> value
> of the environment variable "ZB_LANG", or, if it's not defined,
> "LANG".
> This allows applications to automatically switch the display language
> (provided the application was localized into the selected locale).
> E.g., the example application "moons" defaults to displaying English
> but can be changed to using German, French or Spanish, e.g.,  to
> display
> is German:
>
>     $ export ZB_LANG=de
>     $ moons
>
> The externalization of messages into a .properties files allows the
> embedding
> of parameters references via index (also similar to Java), e.g., the
> message
> to print the value of a number, the message could be defined as
>
>     00001=The value of the counter is {0} ticks.
>
> The ZanyBlue.Text package supports the "passing" of argument values by
> "boxing" the values into ZanyBlue.Text objects.  This particular
> message
> could be printed, with an argument of 1904 as,
>
>     Print_Line ("myapp", "00001", +1904);
>
> The unitary "+" operator is overloaded by the ZanyBlue.Text package to
> create
> the "boxed" object.  See the ZanyBlue documentation for details on the
> types
> supported by the package.
>
> Building
> --------
>
> The ZanyBlue packages have been build primarily on Unix systems using
> a
> recent GCC (GCC 4.4) or on Windows using GNAT GPL 2010.  The GCC
> version
> 4.5.0, however, gives an internal compiler error when building the
> test
> application.
>
> The build is make based.  To build on Unix:
>
>    $ cd src
>    $ make
>
> The build will also build the needed files from Dmitry Kazakov's
> components
> v3.8 open source package used to format real values.  To run the
> ZanyBlue
> tests for the Text package, use the "check" build target.  The
> ZanyBlue tests
> use AdaCore's AUnit testing environment (also included in the src/
> libs3rd
> directory), which is compiled as part of the test application build,
> i.e.,
>
>     $ make check
>
> All the examples, except the "gtk" example, do not require additional
> packages
> beyond the ZanyBlue library.  The "gtk" example requires the GtkAda
> package
> from AdaCore.
>
> http://www.unicode.org/repos/cldr/tags/release-1-8-d03/common  cldr
>
> Contact
> -------
>
> For additional information contact Michael Rohan
> <mich...@zanyblue.com>

Hi Folks,

Noticed that the number of downloads for the libs3rd package exceeded
the download
for the actual ZanyBlue code: I've re-uploaded the code making it the
default download.
The libs3rd package contains the third party dependencies for ZanyBlue
needed only if
you want to change the set of built-in localizations via the
Unicode.org CLDR XML data
or you don't have AUnit.

The regression tests, via a "make check" in the src directory attempt
to first build
to the AUnit library in the src/libs3rd directory.  If AUnit is
already installed simply
run "make check" in the src/test directory rather than the src
directory (the build of
AUnit, via ZanyBlue, only works on Unix).

Take care,
Michael