Re: Text collation

[Kevin Ryde]

address@hidden (Ludovic Courtès) writes:
>
> I'd be in favor of moving the `gettext'-related functions in `(ice-9
> i18n)'.

They'll be used by the core to translate various core messages at some
stage, that's why they're there.

[srfi-13]
> Perhaps, but this is undocumented behavior.  :-)

Keep to a minimum what you say about a function in a separate part of
the manual.

> strto{dl}

The reason those funcs are hardly used is that they're not very good.
Traditionally strtol had no overflow checking, and even now c99
doesn't guarantee localized forms for either.  Also strtod may or may
not have the helpful "p" format, and its rounding isn't guaranteed
(only "recommended practice").

There's no particular virtue in the C library.  If you want to hook
onto it then name functions accordingly, so everyone knows what to
expect.  If you want better semantics, hopefully more scheme-like,
then use names reflecting that betterness.

> The former `i18n.c' (which contained only `gettext'-related code) was
> renamed to `gettext.c' which seems more appropriate.

Please try to resist the temptation to make non-changes.

> It seems more robust to use a dedicated mutex.

If you say you're concerned about speed of startup and size of
modules :-), then you don't want to create a new mutex.  The common one
is specifically there for miscellaneous uses.

> I really meant "unresolved", in the sense that the test cannot be run
> when `fr_FR' isn't available.

"unresolved" is for bugs not yet addressed, or long-standing
misfeatures not easily fixed.  I'm pretty sure "unsupported" is
intended for things not available on account of the system
environment.