SelectFormat supports the creation of internationalized * messages by selecting phrases based on keywords. The pattern specifies * how to map keywords to phrases and provides a default phrase. The * object provided to the format method is a string that's matched * against the keywords. If there is a match, the corresponding phrase * is selected; otherwise, the default phrase is used.
SelectFormat
Note: Typically, select formatting is done via MessageFormat * with a select argument type, * rather than using a stand-alone SelectFormat.
MessageFormat
select
The main use case for the select format is gender based inflection. * When names or nouns are inserted into sentences, their gender can affect pronouns, * verb forms, articles, and adjectives. Special care needs to be * taken for the case where the gender cannot be determined. * The impact varies between languages:
Some other languages have noun classes that are not related to gender, * but similar in grammatical use. * Some African languages have around 20 noun classes.
Note:For the gender of a person in a given sentence, * we usually need to distinguish only between female, male and other/unknown.
To enable localizers to create sentence patterns that take their * language's gender dependencies into consideration, software has to provide * information about the gender associated with a noun or name to * MessageFormat. * Two main cases can be distinguished:
The resulting keyword is provided to MessageFormat as a * parameter separate from the name or noun it's associated with. For example, * to generate a message such as "Jean went to Paris", three separate arguments * would be provided: The name of the person as argument 0, the gender of * the person as argument 1, and the name of the city as argument 2. * The sentence pattern for English, where the gender of the person has * no impact on this simple sentence, would not refer to argument 1 at all:
{0} went to {2}.
Note: The entire sentence should be included (and partially repeated) * inside each phrase. Otherwise translators would have to be trained on how to * move bits of the sentence in and out of the select argument of a message. * (The examples below do not follow this recommendation!)
The sentence pattern for French, where the gender of the person affects * the form of the participle, uses a select format based on argument 1:
{0} est {1, select, female {allée} other {allé}} à {2}.
Patterns can be nested, so that it's possible to handle interactions of * number and gender where necessary. For example, if the above sentence should * allow for the names of several people to be inserted, the following sentence * pattern can be used (with argument 0 the list of people's names, * argument 1 the number of people, argument 2 their combined gender, and * argument 3 the city name):
{0} {1, plural, * one {est {2, select, female {allée} other {allé}}} * other {sont {2, select, female {allées} other {allés}}} * }à {3}.
The SelectFormat pattern string defines the phrase output * for each user-defined keyword. * The pattern is a sequence of (keyword, message) pairs. * A keyword is a "pattern identifier": [^[[:Pattern_Syntax:][:Pattern_White_Space:]]]+
Each message is a MessageFormat pattern string enclosed in {curly braces}.
You always have to define a phrase for the default keyword * other; this phrase is returned when the keyword * provided to * the format method matches no other keyword. * If a pattern does not provide a phrase for other, the method * it's provided to returns the error U_DEFAULT_KEYWORD_MISSING. * * Pattern_White_Space between keywords and messages is ignored. * Pattern_White_Space within a message is preserved and output.
other
format
U_DEFAULT_KEYWORD_MISSING
Example: * \htmlonly * * UErrorCode status = U_ZERO_ERROR; * MessageFormat *msgFmt = new MessageFormat(UnicodeString("{0} est {1, select, female {allée} other {allé}} à Paris."), Locale("fr"), status); * if (U_FAILURE(status)) { * return; * } * FieldPosition ignore(FieldPosition::DONT_CARE); * UnicodeString result; * * char* str1= "Kirti,female"; * Formattable args1[] = {"Kirti","female"}; * msgFmt->format(args1, 2, result, ignore, status); * cout << "Input is " << str1 << " and result is: " << result << endl; * delete msgFmt; * * \endhtmlonly *
Kirti est allée à Paris.
UnicodeString
* Before calling, set parse_pos.index to the offset you want to start * parsing at in the source. After calling, parse_pos.index is the end of * the text you parsed. If error occurs, index is unchanged. *
* When parsing, leading whitespace is discarded (with a successful parse), * while trailing whitespace is left as is. *
* See Format::parseObject() for more. * * @param source The string to be parsed into an object. * @param result Formattable to be set to the parse result. * If parse fails, return contents are undefined. * @param parse_pos The position to start parsing at. Upon return * this param is set to the position after the * last character successfully parsed. If the * source is not parsed successfully, this param * will remain unchanged. * @stable ICU 4.4 */ virtual void parseObject(const UnicodeString& source, Formattable& result, ParsePosition& parse_pos) const; /** * ICU "poor man's RTTI", returns a UClassID for this class. * @stable ICU 4.4 */ static UClassID U_EXPORT2 getStaticClassID(void); /** * ICU "poor man's RTTI", returns a UClassID for the actual class. * @stable ICU 4.4 */ virtual UClassID getDynamicClassID() const; private: friend class MessageFormat; SelectFormat(); // default constructor not implemented. /** * Finds the SelectFormat sub-message for the given keyword, or the "other" sub-message. * @param pattern A MessagePattern. * @param partIndex the index of the first SelectFormat argument style part. * @param keyword a keyword to be matched to one of the SelectFormat argument's keywords. * @param ec Error code. * @return the sub-message start part index. */ static int32_t findSubMessage(const MessagePattern& pattern, int32_t partIndex, const UnicodeString& keyword, UErrorCode& ec); MessagePattern msgPattern; }; U_NAMESPACE_END #endif /* #if !UCONFIG_NO_FORMATTING */ #endif /* U_SHOW_CPLUSPLUS_API */ #endif // _SELFMT //eof