Process <alias> elements in CLDR files

[cmlenz]

Lots of locale data in the CLDR XML files isn't repeated, but instead referred to via <alias> elements. We don't currently process those, which means that some data is missing.

One problem is that <alias> uses XPath, and no part of the standard library supports that, unfortunately. We could use lxml or try to take apart the XPaths manually, but both seem suboptimal. Requiring lxml might work if the results of the import process were in the repository.

[jarek.zgoda@…]

How about pre-processing CLDR with XSLT to get plain, parseable XML, eg. using some external XSL processor, like xsltproc, sablotron or xalan?

[jarek.zgoda@…]

I found some Perl module on CPAN that handles aliases in CLDR files: ​http://search.cpan.org/src/DROLSKY/DateTime-Locale-0.35/tools/generate_from_cldr.

I'll check if it could be of any purpose here.

[cmlenz]

In-progress patch for alias support

[cmlenz]

I've added an incomplete patch that adds some alias processing.

The basic approach is that while locale inheritance is still done when loading locale data files, aliases are resolved when items are accessed. The pickle files store Alias instances. Locale data access is wrapped in an AliasResolvingDict instance.

[cmlenz]

New patch, improved and reasonably complete

[cmlenz]

Ok, uploaded a new patch for the CLDR alias support. Note that this is also based on CLDR 1.6, which requires changes to some tests. Also, still need to add more tests for the alias resolving.

[cmlenz]

Yet another patch update

[cmlenz]

Okay, this should be fixed in [412].