Re: MessageFormat.js

[Matjaz Horvat]

Looks like an interesting approach. I like the syntax, because it's simple.
I like the way they're reducing redundancy with it, but as you proved, we
can also do that (if needed!). But I don't like the way you use it, because
it looks complicated.

BTW, are we also going to have plural rules hardcoded?

-Matjaž


On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 3:09 PM, Staś Małolepszy <st...@mozilla.com> wrote:

> A few day ago I came across MessageFormat.js in my twitter stream. Someone
> recommended it to someone else as the best client- and server-side solution
> to l10n in JavaScript currently available.
>
> I can't find that tweet sadly, but I took some time to dig into
> MessageFormat.js and report back with my findings.
>
> The code is at https://github.com/SlexAxton/**messageformat.js<https://github.com/SlexAxton/messageformat.js>and it's developed by Alex Sexton (
> https://twitter.com/SlexAxton**, http://alexsexton.com/). He's involved
> in Dojo and the author of Jed: http://slexaxton.github.com/**Jed/<http://slexaxton.github.com/Jed/>.
>
>
> The aim seems to be go beyond plurals with a more-generic 'select'
> macro-of-sorts which takes the value passed by the developer and selects
> the right form on the (sub)string (essentially behaving like L20n's index
> on entities).
>
> Here's what the syntax looks like:
>
> 'Your {NUM, plural, one{message} other{messages}} go here.'
>
> NUM is the variable from the developer, 'plural' is the method of
> selecting the right value (the other one is 'select,' more on that below),
> 'one' and 'other' are the possible keys to select from, while 'message' and
> 'messages' are — obviously — the forms corresponding to them.
>
> Plural rules are hardcoded:
>
> https://github.com/SlexAxton/**messageformat.js/tree/master/**locale<https://github.com/SlexAxton/messageformat.js/tree/master/locale>
>
> The recommended way to use MessageFormat.js is to precompile all strings
> on build time. The developer claims it is *much* faster to do it this way
> rather than to parse on runtime. I'd like to see the numbers and compare
> them to ours.
>
> The compilation produces something like this:
>
>
> https://github.com/SlexAxton/**messageformat.js/blob/master/**
> example/fr/i18n.js<https://github.com/SlexAxton/messageformat.js/blob/master/example/fr/i18n.js>
>
> Which you then include in your application:
>
> <script>document.write('<**script src="' +
> (localStorage.getItem('lang') || 'en') + '/i18n.js"><\/script>')</**
> script>
>
> And use like so:
>
> $('<div>').text( window.i18n[ 'sub/folder/foo' ].bar( { NUM: 1 } )
> ).appendTo('#content');
>
>
>
> The 'select' method is more generic and is supposed to help with genders,
> although it could be used with other grammar features, too. The main
> drawback, as I see it, is that everything still happens on the developer's
> side, which is limiting. Not much of a revolution there, but it's
> certainly good to see some evolution as the needs evolve too.
>
> > var mf = new MesssageFormat('en');
> > var message = mf.compile('{GENDER, select, male{He} female{She}
> other{They}} liked this.');
> > message({"GENDER" : "male"});
> "He liked this."
> > message({"GENDER" : "female"});
> "She liked this."
> > message({});
> "They liked this."
>
>
> See more examples at:
>
> https://github.com/SlexAxton/**messageformat.js/tree/master/**example<https://github.com/SlexAxton/messageformat.js/tree/master/example>
>
>
> * * *
>
> One interesting feature of MessageFormat.js is how it tries to reduce
> redundancy of text. Notice how in the examples above and on the website,
> only the parts of the sentance that actually change are exploded into
> multiple forms, while the rest of the sentence is typed only once.
>
> In L20n, this would be possible with local entities, but it occurs to me
> now that one of the design guidelines for L20n should be to prefer
> flexibility at the cost of redundancy.
>
> This improves readability and promotes languages where bigger parts of the
> sentence need to be adjusted to the subject or object (like, surprise
> surprise, Polish)
>
> So for the example above:
>
> '{GENDER, select,
> male {He}
> female{She}
> other{They}} liked this.'
>
> the following L20n equivalent:
>
> <liked[$gender] {
> male: "He liked this.",
> female: "She liked this."
> }>
>
> is better (IMO) than this:
>
> <_pronoun[$gender] {
> male: "He",
> female: "She"
> }>
> <liked "{{ _pronoun }} liked this.">
>
>
> * * *
>
> I was happy to find a new solution to doing i18n/l10n in JavaScript and
> wanted to share it. This seems to be a decent implementation of plurals +
> genders which, judging from the tweetverse's reaction, meets many people's
> needs.
>
> -stas
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