[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Localization of OpenILS

[Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven]

In short:

OpenILS, as it current is, is US-centric and needs a bunch of changes to make
it useful outside of the USA and Canada.

Longer story:

I am currently translating, as much as I am able to given the fact I no longer
work at a library and library-specific lingo is not my forté, the opac.dtd
into Dutch (for the Netherlands).

During the editing I found a lot of specific references that readily assume
either a USA or Canada way of dealing with data, especially when it comes to
addresses, or telephone numbers (county or phone number in XXX-YYY-ZZZZ format
for starters).

Take for example a typical (fictive) Dutch address:

Jan Hoogslag
Jan van Beckerstraat 28a
9452 XJ Sappermeer

Telephone numbers according to: XX-YYYYYYYY or XXX-YYYYYYY or XXXX-YYYYYY

and a fictive Japanese address:

〒283-0024			(postal code)
山形県天童市久野本2-54-105	(prefecture, city, street + number)
田中一廣			(last name, first name)

telephone numbers according to: XXX-YYY-ZZZZ or XXXX-YY-ZZZZ or XXXX-YYY-ZZZZ

Also using my knowledge of various other countries around me as well as my
East Asian knowledge I can point out that if the goal is indeed to get users
outside of the USA and Canada proper i18n and L10N needs to become a goal. I
think this will probably also have repercussions for the database schema and
other parts of the system.

This is also leaving aside the duplication of various translation terms. Using
a system based on message catalogs would avoid the kind of duplication that
now goes on in the system using dtds.

Just my € 0,02.

-- 
Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven <asmodai(-at-)in-nomine.org> / asmodai
イェルーン ラウフロック ヴァン デル ウェルヴェン
http://www.in-nomine.org/ | http://www.rangaku.org/
Of course I can't say, whether it will become better if it gets changed;
but as much as I can say, it must change if it shall become good...