> From: Bruno Haible <br...@clisp.org> > Cc: bug-gnulib@gnu.org > Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2018 19:27:44 +0100 > > > I think it's important to share my experience here, ... > > The problems I describe are not theoretical, I actually bumped into > > them when porting Guile 2.0.x. > > Ah, I wasn't aware that you were describing a problem. What was the > problem that you encountered with Guile? You say: > > > It defines symbols based on LC_MESSAGES and exposes them > > to Scheme. > > What was the problem with that? Since guile is based on the > platform's runtime + gnulib, not the platform's runtime alone, > what issue actually arose?
It's still based on platform runtime, since setlocale eventually goes to libc. I don't remember the details, it was a long time ago. I just know that I needed to disable LC_MESSAGES that crept in with gettext.h (I think you should be able to see that change in the current Guile sources). I don't know if I will have time to reproduce all those problems and describe the details to you. The i18n module of Guile and its test suite was a major headache, that much I remember. > > There were also other issues. One of them, AFAIR, was that > > LC_MESSAGES was defined to a large arbitrary value, but LC_MAX was not > > updated to cover that > > LC_MAX is not a macro that should be visible to Guile users, since it > is platform-dependent. I didn't say it was either. I'm saying that code which expects any LC_* value to be between LC_MIN and LC_MAX might be surprised if Gnulib's LC_MESSAGES is used. > > Instead, applications that > > need these facilities should adapt according to their needs by using > > the Windows native facilities. > > There is and will always be a debate whether a language implementation > (like Guile, but the same applies to C and CLISP) should tend to offer > APIs closer to the platform's particularities or closer to platform- > independent standards like POSIX. As you can see, my opinion is on the > "closer to platform-independent standards" side. Mine too, but we are the minority around here. Just look at the APIs provided by libguile.
