January 16, 2009

icu4j 4.01 released

the icu4j project has just released version 4.01. its a regular maintenance release with the following changes (common across all flavors):
  • Unicode 5.1
  • locale data: Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) 1.6
  • charset converter file size improvement
  • date interval formatting (note only gregorian calendar is supported n this release)
  • improved plural support
specific icu4j changes include:
  • charset
    • ICU2022 converter
    • HZ converter
    • SCSU/BOCU-1 converter
    • charset converter callback
  • thai dictionary break iterator (yeah)
  • JDK TimeZone support (this is pretty decent as you can now share tz IDs between coldfusion/core java & icu4j)
  • locale service provider
  • more convenient formatting of year+month, day+month, and other combinations
  • simple duration formatting
i guess it's time to update the icu4j CFCs for the new formatting bits. as usual you can download the new version from here. btw you can still get a hold of the icu4j tools here.

posted by Paul Hastings @ 7:56 AM 0 comments

January 06, 2009

timezone spatial locator

one of the challenges of trying to use timezones (tz) in an application is that there are so darned many of them--most of which aren't relevant to a given user. for example, have a look at the timezone CFC testbed. the list of tz just goes on and on (and on). you can narrow down the list somewhat if you know the user's location (maybe via geoLocation or, oh yeah, simply asking them), but big countries like the US will still have many tz and often tz IDs won't have much meaning to users. one idea to help with this issue that i've been kicking around for a while is to use a map to help a user pick a tz relevant to them. easing back into work this week i decided now would be as good time as any to put this idea into code. i've put up an alpha version here. it's a flex 3.x "mashup" using google maps as the UI plus geonames to supply the tz info once a user clicks on the map. some things to note:
  • it really is alpha quality, error handling, etc. isn't very pretty
  • the normal double click to zoom in google maps behavior doesn't work as my single mouse click listener seems to be swallowing all the double clicks, so use the zoom control instead
  • it's really too big to be of much practical use, ie a much smaller widget would be better for use on a page (i am as they say "design challenged")
once i iron out all the kinks i'll post the source in the usual places.

posted by Paul Hastings @ 8:11 PM 0 comments