-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Weidner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: 22 February 2007 14:20
To: Ian Warner; [email protected]
Subject: Re: [fw-general] Zend_Locale
> My question though pointed at the fact that I have these three digit
> elements mixed in within the 2 char country codes, with no discernable way
> to sort what countries belong to what 3 digit group.
To be clear:
The functions name is getRegionList()
A region is not a country... a region can also include several countries.
The original term is "territory".
So all returned values are regions... countries are only the 2 lettered
ones.
>> Yes I suppose this is the confusion - why does Region include countries
then?
Also there is not always a relation between Region and Country.
f.e. Czechoslovakia - region 200 is wether a country nor a region which
includes several countries.
It is standalone.
>> But the United Kingdom is in the same boat then and thus breaks this
above rule also. I simply thought Czechoslovakia was a dead entity also?
And the 3 digit codes are also no continents.
Or do you believe that "Caribbean" (029) is a continent ??? :-))
>> No I don't believe this, but then I don't know where you are breaking
down this region then - it does not seem logical that you are not
implementing the real world, with your structure you could add in 'South
West Europe' as a region, it may do some good but having real world elements
that can be listed and sorted by makes more sense for this method and the
class in general.
> Wouldn't it be better to create a separate method that returned these like
> getContinentList()
>
> It returned:
>
> [002] => Africa
> [003] => North America
> [005] => South America
> [009] => Oceania
> [00?] => Europe
Nice feature but not possible...
Is Northern America or Eastern Asia a continent ??
> I only copy and pasted - why is it not possible please?
Also several 3 digit territories also contain other 3 digit territories...
f.e. 001 contains 150 (world -> europe)
150 contains 151 (europe -> eastern europe)
151 contains PL (eastern europe -> poland)
There is no good way to seperate between continents and non continents.
Also 2 digit regions can contain other regions...
f.e. QO contains BV
>> Again having real world entries would be a better start I.e. I could
offer a multi drop down with continents then countries - surely this is more
appropriate for this method
> And then we marked the relation in the country array as below:
> And also that I wanted the option to have the countries use there ISO 3
> char
> elements i.e.
>
> United Kingdom GB GBR
>
> The 3 char in my experience is always better to use, also maybe the dial
> code is a nice option.
>
> So array may be [GB] => array(00?(Europe), United Kingdom, GBR, 44)
We can only work with informations which we have.
We only have the ISO abbreviation codes for all regions, this means
3 digit and 2 char.
We do not have the informations for country dialing code (44) or 3 letter
abbreviations (GBR) nor
2 letter non standard abbreviations (UK).
It would be no good way to have multidimensional arrays.
For simplification and easy handling the returned values are always plain
arrays.
> Again very new so would like to here from people who can comment on these
> ideas, or indeed use this package to create simple hier selects for
> continent, country, town etc selections.
Territory select :
$data = $locale->getRegionList();
foreach ($data as $key -> $territory) {
if (is_int($key)) {
print "\nMultiple:$territory";
}
}
foreach ($data as $key -> $territory) {
if (!is_int($key)) {
print "\nSingle:$territory";
}
}
To clearify things:
This data is avaiable through the localization library which was included
within the framework.
Therefor we can f.e. display the name of countries in every language. But
the negative thing is that we can only display and return data which is
avaiable through the library.
For now the zend framework is the only one which gives the possibility to
have such data simply avaiable within one single function.
>> Ahh ok - should have stated that at the start :) So you are working with
a fixed file, it does however seem to me that this file has some issues
regarding ease of use. I understand I can do the loops above and have
already implemented these - but what would be better is if I can extract the
information from the class while it loops over this file, you will increase
performance and ease of use for developers.
>> Thanks for your help I understand now - and it is probably better if I
compile my own country lists which is a shame.
Btw:
This discussion is very close to I18N problems / components.
You should reply to fw-i18n instead of fw-general for all i18n components to
keep fw-general clean for non specific problems :)
Greetings
Thomas
I18N Team Leader
