Deeper Localization

[Daniel Yacob]

Greetings All,

The localization support in glibc is a fantastic system resource
and I can honestly say has made my computing experience a happier,
more natural and intuitive one.  In the back of my mine there remain
two areas where I still feel the experience is constrained by some
underlying legacy assumptions.  I feel the same way of every
localization infrastructure however.

What are the localization goals of glibc?  Is it limited to
supporting ISO 14652 or is it only a guide?  Has consideration
for the LDML spec been given?  Or is it limited only by the
available time of developers?

What I'd love to see glibc support would be non-gregorian calendar
system and non-decimal (radix 10) numeral systems.  I'm working
with some students who could work on implementing support for
something like LC_CALSYS and LC_NUMSYS.  But what would the
requirements be for the results to be incorporated into a future
glibc?  Also, should it be implemented in auxiliary libraries or
into the core? 


thanks,

/Daniel