This project is meant to provide tools for internationalizing Common
Lisp programs.

One important aspect of internationalization is of course the language
used in error messages, documentation strings etc.  But with this
project we will provide tools for all other aspects of
internationalization as well.  To get an idea of what we are aiming
for, here is a partial list of other tools we are thinking of
providing:

  * Showing dates.  This is a complex issue because it not only
    involves the format of a date, but also the precision.  For
    example, it is probably not useful to provide more precision for
    the time an email was sent than down to the minute.

  * Measuring weight.  There are three important aspects here, namely
    the type of object that is being measured, the unit to be used,
    and the precision.  For instance, in the UK, for measuring the
    weight of people, some people like to use the units "stones" and
    "pounds" for this purpose, and it is not useful to give more than
    one or two digits of precision for the pounds.

  * Measuring temperature.  The same three aspects are involved as
    with weight units.  Some people might want to use degrees
    Fahrenheit for measuring oven temperature, and it is not useful to
    have more precision than 10 degrees.  The same person might want
    to show the temperature of liquid nitrogen in Kelvin.

  * Names of physical quantities.  Even if English is used, some
    people (including myself) do not like names of physical quantities
    that tie them to a particular unit of measure, such as voltage,
    mileage, amperage, wattage, etc.  In addition, such quantities can
    become ambiguous, because there might be several quantities that
    use the same unit, such as length, height, width, or distance.  We
    intend to provide tools that allow programmers to configure what
    names of quantities are used.

  * Etc.