Thursday, April 16, 2009

Africa helping itself on the Internet





In December I blogged about the Afrigen project. In this project people are asked to add CLDR information for their language. Now after some months there are results and, I am impressed. Many languages have made a start and the first languages have completed all the information that is looked for in this standard.

In my opinion having quality information in the "Common Locale Data Repository" is a litmus test for readiness of a language for the Internet. The Afrigen project makes completed data available in their subversion.

The CLDR itself distinguishes levels of CLDR support; this includes how lists are sorted, how numbers are written and how a few languages are called. For this project to insist on a complete set of data takes courage but is in my opinion the right thing to do.

There are people who say that a language is on the map when it has its own Wikipedia, in my opinion a complete set of CLDR data has a much wider application.
Thanks,
       GerardM