Remove pattern string constructor from rust_icu_udat about rust_icu HOT 4 OPEN

Fuchsia currently uses the patterns. I'm open to reshaping the API.

Also, I don't think that parsing is used except in tests; the idea was to be able to go from the serialization to the struct and back. Feel free to file a separate issue for skeleton support.

from rust_icu.

Why does Fuchsia use patterns? This would be a good opportunity to migrate them off of patterns.

from rust_icu.

Why does Fuchsia use patterns? This would be a good opportunity to migrate them off of patterns.

By accident. Here is the code. I rewrote the C++ version of the "wisdom" server in rust as a proof of concept for ICU support in rust. This was the shortest way to rewrite, and at the time I was not looking explicitly into what the best API would be.

Also note that there are two goals, which at least in my mind are equally interesting:

• making the ICU functionality available to rust; and
• ECMA-402 conformance

In this particular case I think we can go for the latter and drop the former. If you have suggestions, design proposals and pull requests are most welcome. I think we can keep this issue open until this is implemented.

from rust_icu.

Thanks for the call site! It looks like they aren't actually using patterns; they're using dateStyle/timeStyle. Making an API that lets you specify dateStyle/timeStyle (mapping that to the pattern constructor under the hood) would be 402-compliant.

You already have a dateStyle/timeStyle API:

https://github.com/google/rust_icu/blob/master/rust_icu_udat/src/lib.rs#L72

Why do you need the one a few lines down that accepts a pattern string? That's the one that is problematic, because there's no good way for a user to construct such a pattern string in a locale-agnostic way.

https://github.com/google/rust_icu/blob/master/rust_icu_udat/src/lib.rs#L99

from rust_icu.