[boost] Fw: [locale] Formal review of Boost.Locale library

Subject: [boost] Fw: [locale] Formal review of Boost.Locale library
From: Chad Nelson (chad.thecomfychair_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-04-07 09:01:44

Begin forwarded message:

Date: Thu, 07 Apr 2011 08:49:20 +0900
From: Darren Cook <darren_at_[hidden]>
Subject: [locale] Formal review of Boost.Locale library

Hello,
I'm not on the devel list but just had a look at the Boost.Locale
library documentation. Feel free to forward this to the list, or
discard it.

>     - What is your evaluation of the documentation?

* No prev/next page links [This should be fixed ASAP, as it discourages
evaluating the library]

* Confusing first page as it seems to only talk about other libraries,
not the one in question. (?)

* The examples are not motivating, and just end up looking complex.

* I'd have liked to see examples in more languages, in particular some
Asian languages, to comfort me that the library has taken their issues
into consideration. If the itch being scratched here is just for a
couple of European languages then the library may have design flaws.

* The backends page (
http://cppcms.sourceforge.net/boost_locale/html/using_localization_backends.html
) looks interesting, and may be the start of justifying the reason for
this library to exist. It could be expanded with something more
concrete: complete examples of doing something useful with different
backends, with timings and exe sizes we could compare.

>     - What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the
>       library?

I would choose to use ICU directly, as I couldn't see a reason not to,
and I'd be concerned that the wrapper would not have wrapped some
obscure function in ICU that I find I end up needing.

>     - How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A
>       quick reading? In-depth study?

A quick reading.

>     - Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain? 

I've used ICU (it is essential in some situations), though possibly not
from C/C++.

Darren

-- 
Darren Cook, Software Researcher/Developer
http://dcook.org/work/ (About me and my work)
http://dcook.org/blogs.html (My blogs and articles)