ECMA added i18n support to ECMAScript (just seven years too late!)

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2013/03/14 07:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2013/03/14/10402136.aspx


My good friend Cathy Wissink sent me email the other day:

I assume you know about this, but if not:

 European Computer Manufacturers Association publishes ECMAScript Internationalization API Specification

In December 2012 the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) approved ECMA-402, which helps ECMAScript developers’  internationalization efforts by specifying  string comparison functions for sorting, number, and currency formatting. This new standard complements the ECMAScript language specification (ECMA-262), enabling programmers to sort strings directly within the browser, while supporting the user’s chosen language and culture.  ECMAScript is the standardized version of JavaScript.

 Mr. Nebojša Ćirić, chairman of the ECMAScript internationalization group, says that the “..main goals for this specification were to provide uniform and ubiquitous internationalization API for developers, to enable offline processing, and to reduce the download size for localization data.”

Previously,  similar functionality required server-based processing, and associated overhead.

The standard has been developed by Ecma Technical Committee 39, among whose committee members are  representatives from Microsoft,  Adobe, Google, IBM, and Mozilla.

 o   How to use: Download ECMA-402, ECMAScript Internationalization API Specification free of charge from the Ecma International website:

http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-402.htm

I had indeed heard of it. The JavaScript in question is the one Microsoft uses in both client and server scenarios.

Glad to hear Microsoft was involved, but I doubt we're going to see anyone updating the scripting libraries.

If they had just done it a few years ago, it would have all been possible...


Mike Dimmick on 14 Mar 2013 9:49 AM:

The IE team has now decided that if standards compliance is desired by the market, gosh darn it, they're going to be the most standards-compliant browser out there - and produced a load of tests to actually nail down what the standards mean. So I'd expect it to be implemented in IE and therefore, by extension, available in Windows Store HTML/JS applications too.

I believe the Windows Script Host JScript script engine is stuck at ECMAScript 3rd edition, and won't now be updated. In IE it has of course been replaced by the Chakra JIT compiler.

Yuhong Bao on 14 Mar 2013 11:18 AM:

Yea, the IE team created jscript9.dll with IE9 instead of continuing to update the old jscript.dll.

Michael S. Kaplan on 14 Mar 2013 4:58 PM:

We haven't seen the do anything, yet....

Michael S. Kaplan on 14 Mar 2013 7:37 PM:

It's a pretty huge chunk of work to sign up for. We'll see what happens, but I'm a cynic...


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referenced by

2013/10/16 ECMA added i18n support to ECMAScript, and they finally got it into IE11!

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