README.TXT
1Copyright (c) 2002-2010, International Business Machines Corporation and others. All Rights Reserved.
2
3IMPORTANT:
4
5This sample was originally intended as an exercise for the ICU Workshop (September 2000).
6The code currently provided in the solution file is the answer to the exercises, each step can still be found in the 'answers' subdirectory.
7
8
9
10** Workshop homepage is:
11 http://www.icu-project.org/docs/workshop_2000/agenda.html
12
13 #Date/Time/Number Formatting Support
14 9:30am - 10:30am
15 Alan Liu
16
17 Topics:
18 1. What is the date/time support in ICU?
19 2. What is the timezone support in ICU?
20 3. What kind of formatting and parsing support is available in ICU, i.e.
21 NumberFormat, DateFormat, MessageFormat?
22
23
24INSTRUCTIONS
25------------
26
27This exercise was first developed and tested on ICU release 1.6.0, Win32,
28Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0. It should work on other ICU releases and
29other platforms as well.
30
31 MSVC:
32 Open the file "datefmt.sln" in Microsoft Visual C++.
33
34 Unix:
35 - Build and install ICU with a prefix, for example '--prefix=/home/srl/ICU'
36 - Set the variable ICU_PREFIX=/home/srl/ICU and use GNU make in
37 this directory.
38 - You may use 'make check' to invoke this sample.
39
40PROBLEMS
41--------
42
43Problem 0:
44
45 Set up the program, build it, and run it. To start with, the
46 program prints out a list of languages.
47
48Problem 1: Basic Date Formatting (Easy)
49
50 Create a calendar, and use it to get the UDate for June 4, 1999,
51 0:00 GMT (or any date of your choosing). You will have to create a
52 TimeZone (use the createZone() function already defined in main.cpp)
53 and a Calendar object, and make the calendar use the time zone.
54
55 Once you have the UDate, create a DateFormat object in each of the
56 languages in the LANGUAGE array, and display the date in that
57 language. Use the DateFormat::createDateInstance() method to create
58 the date formatter.
59
60Problem 2: Date Formatting, Specific Time Zone (Medium)
61
62 To really localize a time display, one can also specify the time
63 zone in which the time should be displayed. For each language,
64 also create different time zones from the TIMEZONE list.
65
66 To format a date with a specific calendar and zone, you must deal with
67 three objects: a DateFormat, a Calendar, and a TimeZone. Each object
68 must be linked to another in correct sequence: The Calendar must use
69 the TimeZone, and the DateFormat must use the Calendar.
70
71 DateFormat =uses=> Calendar =uses=> TimeZone
72
73 Use either setFoo() or adoptFoo() methods, depending on where you
74 want to have ownership.
75
76 NOTE: It's not always desirable to change the time to a local time
77 zone before display. For instance, if some even occurs at 0:00 GMT
78 on the first of the month, it's probably clearer to just state that.
79 Stating that it occurs at 5:00 PM PDT on the day before in the
80 summer, and 4:00 PM PST on the day before in the winter will just
81 confuse the issue.
82
83
84NOTES
85-----
86
87To see a list of system TimeZone IDs, use the TimeZone::create-
88AvailableIDs() methods. Alternatively, look at the file
89icu/docs/tz.htm. This has a hyperlinked list of current system zones.
90
91
92ANSWERS
93-------
94
95The exercise includes answers. These are in the "answers" directory,
96and are numbered 1, 2, etc.
97
98If you get stuck and you want to move to the next step, copy the
99answers file into the main directory in order to proceed. E.g.,
100"main_1.cpp" contains the original "main.cpp" file. "main_2.cpp"
101contains the "main.cpp" file after problem 1. Etc.
102
103
104Have fun!
105