EVOLUTION-MANAGER

Edit File: intro.txt

.. -*- mode: rst; encoding: utf-8 -*- ============ Introduction ============ The functionality Babel provides for internationalization (I18n) and localization (L10N) can be separated into two different aspects: * tools to build and work with ``gettext`` message catalogs, and * a Python interface to the CLDR (Common Locale Data Repository), providing access to various locale display names, localized number and date formatting, etc. .. contents:: Contents :depth: 2 .. sectnum:: Message Catalogs ================ While the Python standard library includes a `gettext <http://docs.python.org/lib/module-gettext.html>`_ module that enables applications to use message catalogs, it requires developers to build these catalogs using GNU tools such as ``xgettext``, ``msgmerge``, and ``msgfmt``. And while ``xgettext`` does have support for extracting messages from Python files, it does not know how to deal with other kinds of files commonly found in Python web-applications, such as templates, nor does it provide an easy extensibility mechanism to add such support. Babel addresses this by providing a framework where various extraction methods can be plugged in to a larger message extraction framework, and also removes the dependency on the GNU ``gettext`` tools for common tasks, as these aren't necessarily available on all platforms. See `Working with Message Catalogs`_ for details on this aspect of Babel. .. _`Working with Message Catalogs`: messages.html Locale Data =========== Furthermore, while the Python standard library does include support for basic localization with respect to the formatting of numbers and dates (the `locale <http://docs.python.org/lib/module-locale.html>`_ module, among others), this support is based on the assumption that there will be only one specific locale used per process (at least simultaneously.) Also, it doesn't provide access to other kinds of locale data, such as the localized names of countries, languages, or time-zones, which are frequently needed in web-based applications. For these requirements, Babel includes data extracted from the `Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) <http://unicode.org/cldr/>`_, and provides a number of convenient methods for accessing and using this data. See `Locale Display Names`_, `Date Formatting`_, and `Number Formatting`_ for more information on this aspect of Babel. .. _`Locale Display Names`: display.html .. _`Date Formatting`: dates.html .. _`Number Formatting`: numbers.html