Re: Locale

[Pascal Bourguignon]

> Dear Sirs
> Hello, My name is H.Higuchi.

Hello,
 
> I'am wondering to use GNUStep but I've heard 
> that Now GNUStep cannot deal with Japanese.
> As far as I read, it seems true.

I've not  used those features, but  GNUstep is designed to  be able to
handle any language, with unicode  strings and fonts. At least, at the
level of the Foundation there should  be no problem.  I don't know the
current status at  the GUI level (fonts, texts,  ...)  with respect to
Japaneese and other exotic languages,  but I would not be surprised to
see  everything   working  correctly,  given  the   needed  fonts  are
installed.

The  localization  principle  of   GNUstep  is  based  on  the  bundle
architecture  and  right  now,  it  is possible  to  localize  GNUstep
applications as well as on NeXTSTEP.



> Why I'd like to run Gnustep is I'd like to study objective C, but 
> AFAIK, there are two implementations of Objective C.

There are more implementations of Objective-C = more Objective-C compilers.


> Which does GCC belong??

gcc is one implementation of Objective-C. The Objective-C runtime used
by the general gcc distribution  is different from that used by Apple,
but that's one of the point  of OpenStep: to hide those differences to
the programmers and to present a portability platform. Note that these
differences of runtime show only when  you try to use the underlying C
functions  that are  used normaly  by the  compilers.  The Objective-C
language (syntax and sematic) is the same for all implementation.


> which does NSObject belong?

NSObject is  a class  defined in the  Foundation of the  OpenStep API.
There are as many NSObject implementation as OpenStep implementations,
that is, up to now :  NeXTSTEP 3.3 (only Foundation existed on NS3.3),
OPENSTEP  4.2, one  implementation on  some version  of  Solaris, PDO,
OPENSTEP  on MS-Windows-NT,  Rhapsody, MacOSX  and GNUstep.  There are
also  some  libraries implementing  some  or  most  of the  Foundation
classes including NSObject.

Normaly all  these implementation share the same  API (@interface) and
can be used only by recompiling the program using this API.

NSObject is the root class for the OpenStep classes.



When  you don't  use the  OpenStep API,  the general  Objective-C root
class is  Object. Then you have  to use another library  of objects or
write your own.


> So which should I use?

I would advice  to start learning Objective-C using  the OpenStep API,
with the  GNUstep implementation. A  costlier alternative would  be to
use  the MacOSX  implementation (you'd  need to  buy a  Macintosh with
MacOSX).

Get a recent gcc with Objective-C.
Get GNUstep.
Start programming in Objective-C.


> Anyway, that all.
> SO, questions are 2.
> 
> 1:Now, Can GNUStep deal with Japanese (like setlocale())?

Normaly, you set a default  for OpenStep applications with the list of
prefered languages in order, something like:

/local/GNUstep/System/Tools/defaults  write NSGlobalDomain NSLanguages \
                                      'Japanese;English;French;Spanish'

Alternatively,  you  could  set   up  an  environment  variable  named
LANGUAGES with the same data: 

export LANGUAGES='Japanese;English;French;Spanish'

before calling a GNUstep application.


Then  the  methods which  look  up  for  localized strings  and  other
localized  resources  will seek  them  in  the $LANGUAGE.lproj  bundle
inside the application  packages. That is, if there  is a subdirectory
named Japanese.lproj, the localized resources will be looked up within
it, or else within English.lproj, or else within French.lproj, etc.


> 2:Which libraries does GCC use?
> 
> Please give me some information!!
> 
> TIA
> H.Higuchi
> PS 
> If OS itself have setlocale()'s fullset(like Linux-glibc2.2 or
> NetBSD-current...) it seems well...Am I wrong?
> 
> I'm using NetBSD+Xwindow4.1.0. beside NetBSD, this version's
> Xwindow available??


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