Mercurial > babel > old > mirror
annotate doc/index.txt @ 103:1ba215a5774d
Add wrapper class bundling the various formatting functions bound to a specific locale and time-zone.
| author | cmlenz |
|---|---|
| date | Wed, 13 Jun 2007 08:26:23 +0000 |
| parents | 98b27ffe1c3a |
| children | 0b4796ed9426 |
| rev | line source |
|---|---|
| 4 | 1 .. -*- mode: rst; encoding: utf-8 -*- |
| 2 | |
| 3 ===== | |
| 4 Babel | |
| 5 ===== | |
| 6 | |
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Add a temporary/placeholder logo. Not the real thing, I promise ;-)
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7 .. image:: logo_small.png |
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03c36aaddaf8
Add a temporary/placeholder logo. Not the real thing, I promise ;-)
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8 :width: 158 |
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03c36aaddaf8
Add a temporary/placeholder logo. Not the real thing, I promise ;-)
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9 :height: 85 |
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Add a temporary/placeholder logo. Not the real thing, I promise ;-)
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10 :align: center |
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Add a temporary/placeholder logo. Not the real thing, I promise ;-)
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11 :alt: Babel |
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Add a temporary/placeholder logo. Not the real thing, I promise ;-)
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12 :class: logo |
| 4 | 13 |
| 14 --------------------------------------------------- | |
| 15 Simple Internationalization for Python Applications | |
| 16 --------------------------------------------------- | |
| 17 | |
| 18 Babel is an integrated collection of utilities that assist in | |
| 19 internationalizing and localizing Python applications, with an | |
| 20 emphasis on web-based applications. | |
| 21 | |
| 75 | 22 * `Working with Message Catalogs <catalogs.html>`_ |
| 23 * `Locale Display Names <display.html>`_ | |
| 24 * `Number and Date Formatting <formatting.html>`_ | |
| 25 * `Command-Line Interface <cmdline.html>`_ | |
| 26 * `Distutils/Setuptools Integration <setup.html>`_ | |
| 27 * `Support Classes and Functions <support.html>`_ | |
| 28 * `Generated API Documentation <api/index.html>`_ | |
| 4 | 29 |
| 30 Introduction | |
| 31 ------------ | |
| 32 | |
| 33 The functionality Babel provides for internationalization (I18n) and | |
| 34 localization (L10N) can be separated into two different aspects: | |
| 35 | |
| 36 * tools to build and work with ``gettext`` message catalogs, and | |
| 37 * a Python interface to the CLDR (Common Locale Data Repository), providing | |
| 38 access to various locale display names, localized number and date | |
| 39 formatting, etc. | |
| 40 | |
| 41 While the Python standard library includes a | |
| 42 `gettext <http://docs.python.org/lib/module-gettext.html>`_ module that enables | |
| 43 applications to use message catalogs, it requires developers to build these | |
| 44 catalogs using GNU tools such as ``xgettext``, ``msgmerge``, and ``msgfmt``. | |
| 45 And while ``xgettext`` does have support for extracting messages from Python | |
| 46 files, it does not know how to deal with other kinds of files commonly found | |
| 47 in Python web-applications, such as templates, nor does it provide an easy | |
| 48 extensibility mechanism to add such support. | |
| 49 | |
| 50 Babel addresses this by providing a framework where various extraction methods | |
| 51 can be plugged in to a larger message extraction framework, and also removes | |
| 52 the dependency on the GNU ``gettext`` tools for common tasks, as these aren't | |
| 53 necessarily available on all platforms. See `Working with Message Catalogs`_ | |
| 54 for details on this aspect of Babel. | |
| 55 | |
| 56 Furthermore, while the Python standard library does include support for basic | |
| 57 localization with respect to the formatting of numbers and dates (the | |
| 58 `locale <http://docs.python.org/lib/module-locale.html>`_ module, among others), | |
| 59 this support is based on the assumption that there will be only one specific | |
| 60 locale used per process (at least simultaneously.) Also, it doesn't provide | |
| 61 access to other kinds of locale data, such as the localized names of countries, | |
|
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496a5c3f9d6d
Started implementation of datetime parsing, using a very basic approach for now.
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62 languages, or time-zones, which are frequently needed in web-based applications. |
| 4 | 63 |
| 64 For these requirements, Babel includes data extracted from the `Common Locale | |
| 65 Data Repository (CLDR) <http://unicode.org/cldr/>`_, and provides a number of | |
| 66 convenient methods for accessing and using this data. See `Locale Display | |
| 67 Names`_ and `Number and Date Formatting`_ for more information on this aspect | |
| 68 of Babel. | |
| 69 |