Formatted Numeric Data

International Components for Unicode (ICU) is IBM's toolkit to internationalise applications. Initially developped for Java it has been ported to C/C++.

IBM's ICU

Useful Links

Home page Source Forge Licence Documentation Doxygen API ISO Language Codes ISO Country Codes ISO Currency Codes ICU Decimal Format Syntax ICU Date/Time Format Syntax

Getting started

Download from IBM

• Source: icu-3.4.1.zip OR icu-3.4.1.tgz
• Documentation: icu-3.4-docs.zip
• User Guide: icu-3.4-userguide.zip

Compile:

• icu/source/allinone/allinone.sln
• icu/source/samples/all/all.sln

Errors:

• For projects strsrch and coll
  • Move:

       if (pOpt->name == 0)
       {
           fprintf(stderr, "Unrecognized option \"%s\"\n", pArgName);
           return FALSE;

}

• • Upward just after the line:

for (OptSpec *pOpt = opts; pOpt->name != 0; pOpt ++) {

• For project legacy
  • remove dependencies to:
    • ../../../../icu-1-8-1/lib/icuucd.lib
    • ../../../../icu-1-8-1/lib/icuind.lib

• For project GDIFontInstance
  • cast 6th parameter: (LPCWSTR) &ttGlyphs[dyStart]

Please note that samples will NOT run in their compilation directories. In order to run any of the samples you must place the executable within the icu/bin directory, where the required DLLs are situated.

Incorporating ICU within an existing project

Additional include directories: $(ICU)\include Additional library directories: $(ICU)\lib

Link with:

 debug: icuucd.lib icuind.lib
 release: icuuc.lib icuin.lib

Make certain these DLLs are present with your executable

 debug: icuuc34d.dll icuin34d.dll icudt34.dll
 release: icuuc34.dll icuin34.dll icudt34.dll

CEGUI's ICU

IBM's ICU provides many features to support internationalisation. The class I've created encapsultes some (not all) of these features.

Locale

A Locale describes the rules in effect within a country for a specific language. These rules specify the formatting of currencies, numeric values, dates, and others. Unfortunately these rules do not take into consideration the modifications that may have been applied within the Regional Settings of Window's Control Panel. However most functions accept a formatting mask. This allows applications to recreate some of the features of the control panel, allowing users to specify their desired formats. The setLocale() and setCurrency() functions will configure the class to adopt the rules specified by the specified language, country, and currency.

=formatNumber

The formatNumber() function formats a numeric value given the specified mask. Three versions are available. The versions accepting a CEGUI::String has been customised to allow large numbers to be formatted: numbers having up to 18 integers and 7 decimals. The current implementation of this function is limited to accepting a single format for positive numbers. If the numeric value to be formatted is negative then a negative sign will precede the formatted value. However it is impossible to format a negative value within parentheses: formatting -1234.56 to (1,234.56).

numberToText

The numberToText() function converts a numeric value into a textual representation. For example the numeric value 123 is converted into "one hundred twenty-three" in english and "cent vingt-trois" in french.

numberToOrdinal

The numberToOrdinal() function converts a numeric value into an ordinal representation. Form example the numeric value 1 is converted into "1st" in english. Support for other languages is either buggy or lacking (or I have improperly coded this feature).

formatText

The formatText() function will parse a numeric value and sprinkle digits into the slots specified by the formatting mask. A North American telephone number of "12223334444" can be formatted into "1 (222) 333-4444" with the mask "0 (000) 000-0000". This non-localised function accepts three format specifier. A "0" represents a forced digit. If the numerical value possesses a digit at that position then the digit will be displayed, otherwise the place holder character(s) will be used. A "#" represents a potential digit. If the numerical value possesses a digit at that position the the digit will be displayed, otherwise nothing is displayed. Finally the apostrophe "'" allows the mask to specify the characters "0", "#", or "'", rather than using them as format specifiers.

formatCurrency

The formatCurrency() function will format a numerical value according to the currently configured locale and currency. It will NOT convert the monetary value of one currency to another.

formatDateTime

The formatDateTime() function will format a date, time, or date/time given the specified mask. The UDate variable type is a double. According to IBM's documentation "A UDate value is stored as UTC time in milliseconds, which means it is calendar and time zone independent. UDate is the most compact and portable way to store and transmit a date and time." However I have found that attempting to specify a date AND time within the UDate data type results in imprecisions of up to 1 minute 47 seconds. My solution is to use two UDate data variables, one to hold a date and another to hold a time.

localToGmt and gmtToLocal

The localToGmt() and the gmtToLocal() functions convert a date and a time between a local and a GMT value.

CeguiStringToDateTime

The CeguiStringToDateTime() function will parse a string specifying a date or a time into it's corresponding UDate value. Although it is possible to parse a string containing both a date and a time the resulting UDate value will be inaccurate, varying from its intended value by up to 1 minute 47 seconds. A better approach is to keep the date and time separated.