This page is part of the web mail archives of SRFI 29 from before July 7th, 2015. The new archives for SRFI 29 contain all messages, not just those from before July 7th, 2015.
Because it relies on FORMAT, SRFI 29 can't accomodate language ordering variations. In other words, it can't model the fact that one language may require substitutions in a different order than another. While Java code for localization is often quite verbose, it handles this problem quite nicely by using indexes in format strings, e.g.:
http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.1/docs/api/java.text.MessageFormat.html Object[] arguments = { new Integer(7), new Date(System.currentTimeMillis()), "a disturbance in the Force" }; String result = MessageFormat.format( "At {1,time} on {1,date}, there was {2} on planet {0,number,integer}.", arguments);: At 12:30 PM on Jul 3, 2053, there was a disturbance in the Force on planet 7.
I would like to recommend changing SRFI 29 to support reordering in a similar manner.