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List:       kde-i18n-doc
Subject:    Re: RFC: Add ISO Currency Code support to KLocale
From:       John Layt <johnlayt () googlemail ! com>
Date:       2009-11-13 1:02:24
Message-ID: 200911130102.24585.johnlayt () googlemail ! com
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On Monday 02 November 2009 22:41:36 John Layt wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am proposing to change KLocale to support the ISO 4217 Currency Code
> standard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217).
> 
> The existing currency support is based on a free-text currency symbol
>  field. This leaves applications such as KSpread, KMyMoney, Skrooge, Kraft,
>  KEuroCalc, and various Plasma widgets to provide their own implementation
>  of the ISO codes and translations of the names, leading to unnecessary
>  duplication and inconsistency.
> 
> This is an initial proposal aimed at improving the l10n and i18n issues, so
> comment is particularly sought from the translation teams on a number of
> issues, especially given how much work may be involved for them.
> 
> I am also seeking comment from the various financial applications to ensure
> the initial implementation is flexible enough to meet their needs both now
>  and in the future.
> 
> Details of the Design and Outstanding Issues are at
> http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/kdelibs/localisation#ISO_4217_Currency_Cod
> e_Support and the initial code can be found on the Review Board at
> http://reviewboard.kde.org/r/2049 .
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> John.

Hi guys,

With the feature and string freeze looming, I was hoping you might have some 
comments for me on this, especially as there could be upwards of 750 new 
strings created for translation (well, some of those are a copy/paste from 
existing apps, but it's still a lot of work).  I'm wanting to commit this 
stuff this weekend, but there's a number of open issues I need your help to 
solve before it's ready.  I especially don't want to dump a load of work on 
you a few days before freeze, but neither do I want to shelve it until 4.5.

This change would add desktop files for about 150 currency codes, each 
including potentially translatable strings such as currency name, currency 
symbols, and currency unit and subunit names in singular and plural form.  As 
mentioned above, code is at http://reviewboard.kde.org/r/2049 and design is at 
http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/kdelibs/localisation#ISO_4217_Currency_Code_Support

The issues I still have outstanding are:

1) Do we provide a translated form of the ISO Currency Code, e.g. translate 
USD into Arabic script? - From what I've seen in the financial world the codes 
get used as is no matter what language or script, so I don't think so.

2) Do we provide a translated form of the currency symbols, e.g. translate US$ 
into Arabic script?  Again I don't think so for same reason as 1), but what of 
the local symbols that have both Latin and local script forms, e.g. Saudi Rial 
has Latin SR and Arabic ر.س?  I think we should just Include both forms in the 
symbol list and let the user choose which one they actually want for their 
circumstances.

As a note to both 1) and 2), we do not currently translate our existing 
currency symbols in the locale files (e.g. Saudi Arabia has SAR as a symbol), 
so not doing so for now would not be a step backwards.  We could always add 
this in 4.5 if there's demand.

3) Do we provide a translated form of the ISO Currency Name?  This is the 
'official' and very inconsistently formatted ISO name, some of which are not 
even in English!  I'm 50/50 on this, they are the official names and so might 
actually be needed in an untranslated form, but potentially showing 
untranslated names in a GUI is not good.  We will provide a consistently 
formatted English display name to be translated and used in GUI's, so for now 
I am thinking to not translate the official form.  

Note the display names are almost all already translated in KMyMoney and 
KSpread and others.

4) Plural forms of currency Unit and Subunit names, e.g. dollar/dollars and 
cent/cents.  This is where the most work would be as there are no existing KDE 
translations to copy.  I'm also not sure how the plural issue would work, e.g. 
for those languages where the plural changes depending on the quantity?  I 
plan to include in 4.5 a fancy format for monetary values in 
KLocale::formatMoney() to return say "15 dollars and 20 cents", but for now 
there is no direct use for the names, but I'm sure some apps would like to add 
strings that use them.

5) How do I hook all this into scripty to have the correct strings extracted 
for translation?

In short, I think the following fields will need translating:
  CurrencyNameDisplay
  CurrencyUnitSingular
  CurrencyUnitPlural
  CurrencySubunitSingular
  CurrencySubunitPlural

As an interim measure, I would be happy to remove the API for the 'official' 
ISO Name, Units and Subunits from the KCurrencyCode class while still leaving 
the strings in the files but untranslated for now.  I could then add the API 
back for 4.5 when we've worked out how to actually implement and use them.

Thanks for your time.

John.

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