ICU Core Meeting Notes

Jan 24, 2007

Attending:
Mark Davis
John Emmons
Deborah Goldsmith
Andy Heninger
Eric Mader 
George Rhoten
Markus Scherer
Tex Texin
Yoshito Umaoka
Ram Viswanadha

Action Items


Number Due Who Description
38 01/24/07 Ram Test the CNV data structure changes with ICU4J and make sure the file is backwards compatible. 
41 1/24/07 Yoshito Submit ticket for adding new API to validate timezone IDs
42 1/24/07 Steven Submit ticket for investigating resynch() API for ICU4C
43 1/24/07 Yoshito Fix the API in localePatternCharacters such that the root data is returned and investigate the JDK behavior
44 2/21/07 Deborah Send out  a proposal about the direction on convrtrs.txt

Reorganize ICU Website

Options:
  1. Keep Sourceforge.net as mirror. 
  2. icu-project.org contains all web connect and sourceforge.net contains only download page and redirect pages to icu-project.org website.
Decision: Most of the members prefer Option 2 and keep the option for setting up mechanical mirrors open.

Steven  checked Sourceforge.net for custom error pages and found that it is possible.
   

getLocalizedPattern() APIs in ICU

Issue

getLocaledPattern() APIs depend on localizedPatternChars in CLDR. CLDR has deprected localizedPatternChars and going forward there will not be any more updated to these items. When additional pattern characters are added to DateFormat, NumberFormat, etc., the tests in ICU fail because they check the length of known patterns and then compare with the length of data fetched from the bundle, when the lengths don't match, the tests fail. Since these APIs are marked @stable in ICU, we need to decide what should be done.

Doug: Deprecating the APIs is problematic since ICU4J must be kept in synch with JDK.
Mark: We can deprecate this API in ICU4C and document that use of this API is highly discouraged in ICU4J

Maintenance of Convrtrs.txt

Issue

Adding and removing converters  is currently done by hand, so this system is very fragile. Some tables do not exist but they  are in the repository. To add tables, there are a set of documented steps that need to be done, but we should investigate if we can automate this process.

Deborah: We could put the aliases in the UCM files and assemble cnvrtrs.txt at build time.
Steven: There are technical problems for assembling this information from the UCM files. UCM files are mechanically generated from files that do not have this information.
George: Most of the time adding aliases is a judgment call, moreover the gencnval tool checks for errors.

Decision:
  1. Document that cnvrtrs.txt must be updated in ucmfiles.mk or ucmlocal.mk
  2. Schedule time for converter packs
  3. Work on a master table that contains all aliases
  4. Investigate preference ordering system such that if one file is removed, the other becomes the default