[sword-devel] proposal for changes in locale system

[Martin Gruner]

Hey all,

now that 1.5.7 is released, I'd like to propose a change to the locale system.

It seems that in BibleTime we can only use the locales which are encoded in 
the local 8bit encoding of the user. Selecting others won't work, as well as 
the windows specific locales (cp*).

There are different possible approaches to this situation:

1. Change nothing. Rremains broken. ;)
2. Add UTF-8 locales for each language (Encoding= line in config file). Apps 
can then select which locale file (local or UTF-8) to use. No overhead in 
apps, maintenance overhead in Sword.
3. Convert everything to UTF-8. Apps then need to convert to local, if 
necessary. Small overhead in apps.
4. Add Encoding= line to all locale files and have apps convert strings to 
UTF-8 themselves, if necessary. Larger overhead in apps.

I'd vote for number 3, but not sure if that is a possibility for Windows based 
programs. Any other suggestions/corrections? I'd like to volunteer for this 
kind of task (conversion etc.), in case I should be able to do it. Looking 
forward to hear what you think.

Martin