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//usr/share/doc/python-babel-0.9.4/doc/intro.html
<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="generator" content="Docutils 0.4: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/"> <title>Introduction</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="common/style/edgewall.css" type="text/css"> </head> <body> <div class="document" id="introduction"> <div id="navigation"> <span class="projinfo">Babel 0.9.4</span> <a href="index.html">Documentation Index</a> </div> <h1 class="title">Introduction</h1> <p>The functionality Babel provides for internationalization (I18n) and localization (L10N) can be separated into two different aspects:</p> <blockquote> <ul class="simple"> <li>tools to build and work with <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">gettext</span></tt> message catalogs, and</li> <li>a Python interface to the CLDR (Common Locale Data Repository), providing access to various locale display names, localized number and date formatting, etc.</li> </ul> </blockquote> <div class="contents topic"> <p class="topic-title first"><a id="contents" name="contents">Contents</a></p> <ul class="auto-toc simple"> <li><a class="reference" href="#message-catalogs" id="id1" name="id1">1 Message Catalogs</a></li> <li><a class="reference" href="#locale-data" id="id2" name="id2">2 Locale Data</a></li> </ul> </div> <div class="section"> <h1><a id="message-catalogs" name="message-catalogs">1 Message Catalogs</a></h1> <p>While the Python standard library includes a <a class="reference" href="http://docs.python.org/lib/module-gettext.html">gettext</a> module that enables applications to use message catalogs, it requires developers to build these catalogs using GNU tools such as <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">xgettext</span></tt>, <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">msgmerge</span></tt>, and <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">msgfmt</span></tt>. And while <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">xgettext</span></tt> 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.</p> <p>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 <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">gettext</span></tt> tools for common tasks, as these aren't necessarily available on all platforms. See <a class="reference" href="messages.html">Working with Message Catalogs</a> for details on this aspect of Babel.</p> </div> <div class="section"> <h1><a id="locale-data" name="locale-data">2 Locale Data</a></h1> <p>Furthermore, while the Python standard library does include support for basic localization with respect to the formatting of numbers and dates (the <a class="reference" href="http://docs.python.org/lib/module-locale.html">locale</a> 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.</p> <p>For these requirements, Babel includes data extracted from the <a class="reference" href="http://unicode.org/cldr/">Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR)</a>, and provides a number of convenient methods for accessing and using this data. See <a class="reference" href="display.html">Locale Display Names</a>, <a class="reference" href="dates.html">Date Formatting</a>, and <a class="reference" href="numbers.html">Number Formatting</a> for more information on this aspect of Babel.</p> </div> <div id="footer"> Visit the Babel open source project at <a href="http://babel.edgewall.org/">http://babel.edgewall.org/</a> </div> </div> </body> </html>
