[PATCH] Add verbose comments to 'era' in ja_JP locale.

[TAMUKI Shoichi]

Hello Rafal-san,

From: Rafal Luzynski <digitalfreak@lingonborough.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Add verbose comments to 'era' in ja_JP locale.
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2019 12:04:18 +0100 (CET)

> > Sorry, I am not happy to put the information in ja_JP locale data.
> 
> That was my first thought as well.  But after a while I found a reason
> in Carlos' patch.  Yes, we should not explain in the locale data file
> how era format works but we should explain how the rules have been
> applied to implement this particular locale data file.  It's like
> a comment in a source code file: it should not explain how the language
> works but how this particular solution had been implemented and what
> this piece of code meant.
> 
> Shortly: explaining the format of the era field - no; explaining how
> and why it has been provided for ja_JP - yes.

OK.  I got it.

> > it would be better to include the information in a documentation named
> > "The locale definition source file format", that is expected to be
> > created in Glibc.
> 
> Sadly, that document does not exist now.  As far as I remember the
> previous documentation was so outdated that it was better to remove it.
> The current guidelines say that in order to create a new locale file
> you should take any existing (and working) now and change it to your
> needs.
> 
> Which of course is not an excuse to put the general description of the
> era field in a locale data file.

Was the document deleted?  Oh my goodness.

As you know, it was pointed out that there is a bug in the direction
of BC in Bugzilla.  If there was a proper manual in Glibc, there would
be no problem.

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=24162#c6

> > This documentation looks something like this:
> > 
> > http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xbd/locale.html
> 
> This is definitely good but Glibc has many extensions which means
> that a potential Glibc version should include this information plus
> have many additional pieces.

Certainly, it will take enough effort and time to rebuild it.

By the way, Glibc does not support the abbreviation of era, so we can
not use commonly used expressions in Japan, like "H31.03.30" (today).
I want to introduce "abera" to Glibc in the future.

# H -> Heisei
# S -> Showa
# T -> Taisho
# M -> Meiji
# ROC -> Minguo (in Taiwan)

Regards,
TAMUKI Shoichi