Boost.Locale

What is Boost.Locale?

Boost.Locale is a library that provides high quality localization facilities in C++. It was originally designed a part of CppCMS - C++ Web Framework project and then contributed to Boost.

Boost.Locale gives powerful tools for development of cross platform localized software - the software that talks to user in its language.

Features:

• Correct case conversion, case folding and normalization.
• Collation (sorting), including support for 4 Unicode collation levels.
• Date, time, timezone and calendar manipulations, formatting and parsing, including transparent support for calendars other than Gregorian.
• Boundary analysis for characters, words, sentences and line-breaks.
• Number formatting, spelling and parsing.
• Monetary formatting and parsing.
• Powerful message formatting (string translation) including support for plural forms, using GNU catalogs.
• Character set conversion.
• Transparent support for 8-bit character sets like Latin1.
• Support for char and wchar_t.
• Experimental support for C++11 char16_t and char32_t strings and streams.

Boost.Local complements the standard library's API, making it easy to write cross platform and "cross culture" software.

In order to achieve this goal, Boost.Locale uses the state-of-the-art Unicode and Localization library: ICU - International Components for Unicode.

Boost.Locale creates the natural glue between the C++ locales framework, iostreams, and the powerful ICU library.

Boost.Locale provides non-ICU based localization support as well. It is based on the operating system native API or on the standard C++ library support. Sacrificing some less important features, Boost.Locale becomes less powerful but lighter and easier to deploy.

Charset conversion is also provided through the lightweight IConv library. When that is not available ICU or operating system native APIs are used.

Warning

The system IConv library on Apple macOS may not be GNU conformant and can lead to unexpected results during encoding conversions. Using the GNU IConv provided by HomeBrew is highly recommended.

Tutorials

• Introduction to C++ Standard Library localization support
• Using Boost.Locale
  • Locale Generation
  • Collation
  • Text Conversions
  • Numbers, Time and Currency Formatting and Parsing
  • Messages Formatting (Translation)
  • Character Set Conversions
  • Boundary analysis
  • Localized Text Formatting
  • Working with dates, times, timezones and calendars.
  • Getting information about the current locale
  • Working with multiple locales
• Using Localization Backends
• Recommendations and Myths
• Building the Library
• Appendix
  • rationale
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Default Encoding under Microsoft Windows
  • Running Examples under Microsoft Windows
  • Using Gettext Tools on Windows
  • Glossary
  • Tested Compilers and Platforms
  • Status of C++11 char16_t/char32_t support
  • Special Thanks
• Changelog