README for Package CL-L10N
Author: Sean Ross
i18n, CLDR stuff: Levente Mészáros, Attila Lendvai
Homepage: http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cl-l10n/
CLDR: http://unicode.org/cldr/


*** About

cl-l10n is a localization package for common-lisp. It is meant to be
serve the same purpose as Allegro Common Lisp's various locale
functions. It currently runs on CMUCL, SBCL, CLISP, ECL, Lispworks and
Allegro CL although porting to a new implementation should be trivial.
It is distributed under an MIT style license although the locale files
themselves are distributed under the LGPL.

There is also i18n support, read on for details.

*** Install

You need to download the CLDR data files from http://unicode.org/cldr/
(core.zip) and extract it into "cl-l10n/cldr/". There's a script that
does that:

cl-l10n/bin/update-cldr.sh

*** Emacs goodies

I have this in my init.el that, besides other things, adds better
indentation for DEFRESOURCES.

(require 'cl)

(let ((overrides
       '((defclass* defclass)
         (defcondition* defcondition)
         (def (4 4 (&whole 4 &rest 2) &body))
         (defresources (4 &rest (&whole 2 &lambda &body))))))
  (dolist (el overrides)
    (put (first el) 'common-lisp-indent-function
         (if (symbolp (second el))
             (get (second el) 'common-lisp-indent-function)
             (second el)))))

*** API

See docs/cl-l10n.texi


*** i18n

When locales are loaded cl-l10n also tries to load locale-specific
resource files. They are simple lisp files that are read into the
*resource-package* package when defined. Use with-resource-package
to define it at an appriately high level of your application (e.g.
the request loop of web-apps after the Accept-Language header has
been parsed. See UCW for examples.)

I suggest to create a separate package for language resources and
don't import it in your app, so you can easily see/search for
lang:foo references.

The resources in these files are either constants or lambdas. For
lambdas we create a function with the resource name that looks up
the locale specific implementation and calls it. This way you can
write in your code (lang:plural-of #"foot") and it will return
"feet" in the language given in *locale*.

#"" is a reader macro that expands into a lookup-resource call.

Resource lookup can fall back to less preferred languages when
*locale* is a list.

*** TODO/plans

The CLDR files contain formatting patterns that could be used for
generating/driving parsers, especially for date/time.

http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr35/tr35-21.html#Lenient_Parsing

Collation info should be used to generate locale sensitive string
comparators. For the whole (quite complex!) story read this:
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr10/

Consider reinstating a dwim-ish date/time parser, but it brings up
more questions than i want to write up right now.

*** Testing

Run (asdf:oos 'asdf:test-op :cl-l10n) to test the package.
If you have unexpected failures, drop a mail to the mailing
list.

Enjoy
  Sean.