[Zope-dev] Making Zope international

[Thilo Mezger]

hi!

there are a couple of details that make zope a little bit inconvenient
when using it outside the US.  for example:

<!--#var money thousands_commas fmt=dollars-and-cents-->  will output:

	$10,000.00

if you want to develop software for non-angloamerican countries and want
to output monetary values you usually want something like this:

	 fl 10.000,00     (Dutch guilders)
	 DM 10.000,00     (Deutsche Mark)
	    10.000,00 F   (French francs)
	 L. 10.000,00     (Italian Lira)

please mind the different use of "," to seperate decimals and "." to
seperate thousands and the currency symbols before or after the money
value.  this is how most continental european countries format money
values.

in addition, the available output formats for the DateTime object
(aCommon, fCommon, etc.)  are not suitable for use in continental europe.
for example, in germany i would like to have a format to output a date
like this:  "22. Juni 1999" or "22. 06. 1999".

writing zope products that behave according to these local conventions is
quite difficult.  on the other hand, i think making zope aware of the
locale system that is available on most unix systems shouldn't be this
hard.

therefore, i'd like to suggest the creating of ZIP - the

	ZOPE INTERNATIONALIZATION PROJECT

instead of asking DC to implement the features mentioned above a couple of
volunteers could develop some more output methods for the DateTime object
and expand the money output methods to behave more internationally.
strictly keeping the new version compatible with the old one of course.
later, these code contributions might be merged with the official zope if
DC approved the changes.

i already have a couple of ideas but i'm still looking for a couple of
people (preferably from different european countries) to discuss and
implement these i18n functions.

suggestions?  comments?  volunteers?


thilo