1/*! 2\page locale_intro Introduction to the Locale Kit 3 4The Locale Kit provides a set of tools for internationalizing, localizing and 5translating your software. This includes not only replacing string with their 6translations at runtime, but also more complex tasks such as formatting numbers, 7dates, and times in a way that match the locale preferences of the user. 8 9The main way to access locale data is through the be_locale_roster. This is a 10global instance of the BLocaleRoster class, storing the data for localizing an 11application according to the user's preferred settings. Most of the time, you 12should be able to use the default BLocale object and its convenience methods to 13get things formatted according to the user preferences. However, you can also 14use the various formatter classes directly when you need a more advanced 15formatting. For example, you may need to format a date with a fixed format in 16english for including in an e-mail header, as it is the only format accepted 17there. 18 19Note that creating a new format is a costly operation. The idea is that you 20create your format object once and reuse it accross your application to format 21all the stuff that needs it. 22 23Unlike the other kits in Haiku, the Locale kit does not live in libbe. When 24building a localized application, you have to link it to liblocale.so. If you 25want to use the catalog macros, you also have to link each of your images 26(that is, applications, libraries and add-ons) to liblocalestub.a. 27 28*/ 29