The Ruby on Rails team announces a new internationalization framework to make it easier for developers to build Web sites and applications suited to languages other than English. Ruby on Rails 2.2, released Nov. 21, delivers the internationalization framework.With a new framework, Ruby on Rails
now has improved support for internationalization.
In a blog post entitled, "Myth
#6: Rails only speaks English," David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator
of Ruby on Rails, explains the addition to the Rails platform that makes it
easier for developers to create applications for languages other than English.
"It used to be somewhat inconvenient to deal with UTF-8 [Unicode
Transformation Framework] in Rails because Ruby's primary method of dealing
with them was through regular expressions," Hansson said. "If you
just did a nave string operation, you'd often be surprised by results and
think that Ruby was somehow fundamentally unable to deal with UTF-8."
Hansson said with Ruby on Rails 2.2, which was released on Nov. 21,
internationalization will be easier with the Ruby-based Web framework.
"Rails 2.2 ships with a simple internationalization framework that makes
it silly-easy to do translations and locales," he said. "There's a
dedicated discussion group, wiki and Web site for getting familiar with this
work. I've been using it in a test with translating Basecamp to Danish and
really like what I'm seeing ... Rails is very capable of making sites that need
to be translated into many different locales. Before Rails 2.2, you'd have to
use one of the many plug-ins. After Rails 2.2, you can use what's in the box
for most cases (or add additional plug-ins for more exotic support)."
Adoption of the Spring Framework is soaring. Click here to read more.
Internationalization is the process of designing a software application so
that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering
changes. Localization is the process of adapting software for a specific region
or language by adding locale-specific components and translating text.
Although there were ways to add internationalization before Rails 2.2, they
were not as efficient as the new framework, Hansson said. He wrote:
It was long a point of contention that
Rails didn't ship with a[n] internationalization framework in the box. There
has, however, long been a wide variety of plug-ins that added this support.
There was localize, globalize and many others. Each with their own strengths
and tailored to different situations.
All these plug-ins have powered Rails
applications in other languages than English for a long time. Some made it
possible to translate strings to multiple languages, others just made Rails
work well for one other given language. But whatever your translation need was,
there was probably a plug-in out there that did it.
Intridea, a Ruby on Rails software maker and consultancy, announced that the
CSI (Computer Security Institute), a community of security experts and
professionals, has chosen Present.ly to be the official microblogging
technology provider for all their Web and mobile collaboration and
communication needs.
Present.ly is a Ruby-on-Rails-based, on-demand enterprise social media
solution from Intridea. The product is a Twitter-like tool for the enterprise.
Barg Upender, CEO and founding partner of
Intridea, said Present.ly is written in Ruby, Ruby on Rails and Erlang.
SI Director Robert Richardson called Present.ly a
"safe and secure business alternative to mainstream social media tools
Facebook, MySpace and Twitter." Richardson said distinguishing characteristics of
Present.ly include advanced security and permission controls, group
functionality, Twitter interoperability, file sharing, an open API,
scalability, and an appealing interface.
Application Development 
