I came across a comment in some code referring to said code being "I18N safe".
What does this refer to?
+4
A:
Internationalization. The derivation of it is "the letter I, eighteen letters, the letter N".
chaos
2009-02-25 17:31:01
+3
A:
i18n means i**nternationalizatio**n => i (18 letters) n. Code that's marked as i18n safe would be code that correctly handles non-ASCII character data (e.g. Unicode).
Rob K
2009-02-25 17:31:48
And, frequently, code that keeps strings in a separate file that can be swapped out, rather than in the source code.
David Thornley
2009-02-25 17:53:45
+23
A:
I + (some 18 characters) + N = InternationalizatioN
I18N safe means that steps were taken during design and development that will facilitate Localization (L10N) at a later point.
cdonner
2009-02-25 17:32:10
+1
A:
Without any additional information, I would guess that it means the code handles text as UTF8 and is locale-aware. See this Wikipedia article for more information.
Can you be a bit more specific?
Cal Jacobson
2009-02-25 17:32:33
As I'm in a pedantic mood - it could handle the text as any Unicode not just UTF8. UTF7 or UTF16 would do just as well.
MarkJ
2009-05-06 22:55:16
+8
A:
This is most often referred to a code or construct ready for I18N - i.e easily supported by common I18N techniques. For instance, the following is ready:
printf(loadResourceString("Result is %s"), result);
while the following is not:
printf("Result is " + result);
because the word order may vary in different languages. Unicode support, international date-time formatting and the like also qualify.
EDIT: added loadResourceString to make an example close to real life.
Michael Pliskin
2009-02-25 17:33:02
why isn't that second one the same as the first one? Doesn't result just get pasted in in place of %s?
stimms
2009-02-25 18:04:53
It does BUT the second one allows you to move the string to resources easily and rearrange words. You can then translate it as for instance "%s является результатом" (in russian) - notice different word order, you cannot use the first form directly.
Michael Pliskin
2009-02-25 20:14:02
Great answer. This is EXACTLY what i18n-safe means. It usually refers to functions like this one.
Mike Sickler
2009-02-26 00:14:58
@Oscar: this form is not 'I18N safe', it is one step further when a particular I18N technique is already applied. I think 'I18N safe' refers to general ideas making code more suitable for I18N. However your example qualify as well.
Michael Pliskin
2009-02-26 06:32:33
I'm with Oscar on this. Neither of your examples are I18N safe - both need modification. The second one is a step on the way, but you're not world-ready yet.
MarkJ
2009-05-06 22:58:23
Michael Pliskin
2009-05-10 10:18:13
A small point: this answer doesn't actually tell you *what* "I18N" is, just provides an example of some code that is versus some code that isn't.
RCIX
2009-07-03 08:18:52
+1
A:
I18N stands for Internationalization.
In a nutshell: I18N safe code means that it uses some kind of a lookup table for texts on the UI. For this you have to support non-ASCII encodings. This might seem to be easy, but there are some gotchas.
KovBal
2009-02-25 17:35:10
+2
A:
i18n is a shorthand for "internationalization". This was coined at DEC and actually uses lowercase i and n.
As a sidenote: L10n stands for "localization" and uses capital L to distinguish it from the lowercase i.
Anton Gogolev
2009-02-25 17:35:13
+1
A:
i18n-safe is a vague concept. It generally refers to code that will work in international environments - with different locale, keyboard, character sets etc. True i18n-safe code is hard to write.
It means that code cannot rely on:
sizeof (char) == 1
because that character could be a UTF-32 4-byte character, or a UTF-16 2-byte character, and occupy multiple bytes.
It means that code cannot rely on the length of a string equalling the number of bytes in a string. It means that code cannot rely on zero bytes in a string indicating a nul terminator. It means that code cannot simply assume ASCII encoding of text files, strings, and inputs.
Paul Beckingham
2009-02-26 02:32:56