Locales

All,
Can we keep all the relevant locale discussion under one subject....

(I know, I know, who decides what's relevant...)

Also the nelocsig is interested. (Are there any other lists that are
relevant to the locale discussion?)

ok, back to thread:

Paul,
Good points. The idea of saving locale definition with the data is
important, but as there is no definition of what is and included in a
locale, most people would not think to include capitalization rules when
saving.
Further, most applications do not give you a way to access this kind of
information to save it.
(I mean specifically the capitalization rules, other locale data may be
exportable.)

tex

Paul Deuter wrote:
> 
> A similar problem is when capitalization rules change for a locale.
> The German government did this a year or so back.  But what if
> your software was using the older uppercasing tables to normalize
> usernames? (i.e. to allow users to logon with a case insensitive name)
> 
> On the one hand it is nice for an application to be able to inherit
> these rules from the underlying OS (so that your program just works
> in every locale even when the rules change).
> 
> It may also be the case that your software is depending on the locale
> to not change.  In those cases it is necessary to "copy" out the locale
> dependencies and keep them stored with the data that depends upon them.
> This is especially the case with currency.  You can let a user type
> in a currency value and then get the denomination from the locale.  But
> once you have done that, the software must keep the denomination with
> the value.  You cannot let an invoice change from dollar values to
> francs
> just because you emailed it to someone in France.
> 
> -Paul
> 
> Paul Deuter
> Internationalization Manager
> Plumtree Software
> paul.deuter@plumtree.com
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tex Texin [mailto:texin@progress.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2001 10:15 AM
> To: Carl W. Brown
> Cc: www-international@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Euro mess (Was: valid locales ---> was bilingual websites
> 
> Carl,
> 
> I hope the locales issue doesn't fan out into thousands of other
> threads, I won't be able to track them.
> 
> With respect to the Euro, there are several different issues.
> 
> a) Of course the Euro is important and having proper support for the
> Euro is required.
> 
> b) ISO 8859-15 does not seem to be getting much adoption, which is a
> good thing. Since 8859-15 and 8859-1 are incompatible, and if you adopt
> 8859-15 you likely still need to interchange text with users of 8859-1,
> (as they both support the same languages more or less), the world would
> be a very difficult if there was a lot of adoption of -15.
> 
> Anyone considering -15, should instead be considering Unicode.
> 
> And there are other alternatives if the only requirement is to support
> the Euro character and continue with a single byte codepage.
> Spelling out "Eur" or "Euro" is acceptable if there is space. And
> inventing mechanisms (e.g. escape sequences, or other specialized
> encodings) to print the Euro symbol are also possible.
> 
> c) The issue relative to locales, is there is no standard handling for
> the Euro. So my understanding is some software will change the currency
> of their European locales from native monetary units to Euro on Jan. 1.
> This may be useful for some, but will likely break many applications as
> well.
> 
> Others will create new locales specific to the Euro and/or specific to
> the old native currency. But which nomenclature you use when you are
> integrating software with different technologies and different locale
> naming conventions is a mystery to me.
> 
> So now if I say fr_fr I do not know which currency I get and it may
> change from Dec 31 2001 to Jan 1 2002.
> If I use an application that integrates technologies with different
> rules for locales, it could get very messy.
> 
> I presume reading monetary data created before 2002 may also be
> interpreted differently after 2002.
> 
> And minor upgrades of software may in fact invoke these locale changes,
> so what should be a minor patch may in fact be a large change to
> monetary handling.
> 
> d) I don't know why there isn't more of an outcry over this. Maybe there
> is a reason the problems I cite in (c) won't happen that I don't
> understand. (I am by no means an expert on the subject. Most of my own
> software has explicit regional settings and doesn't follow the locale
> model.) It will be interesting to know what people find if they change
> their system clock to 2002 and do some application testing.
> 
> hth
> tex
> 
> "Carl W. Brown" wrote:
> >
> > Tex,
> >
> > I wonder why no one seems to care about the Euro?  Are sites going to
> > continue to use iso-5589-1?  How many browsers and systems support
> > iso-5589-15?
> >
> > Carl
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: www-international-request@w3.org
> > > [mailto:www-international-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Tex Texin
> > > Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2001 7:42 PM
> > > To: Martin Duerst
> > > Cc: David_Possin@i2.com; Karl Ove Hufthammer;
> www-international@w3.org
> > > Subject: Re: valid locales ---> was Re: bilingual websites
> > >
> > >
> > > Martin,
> > >
> > > You mean I can't just grouse and take potshots from the sidelines?
> ;-)
> > >
> > > Well, I have not seen an alternative proposed and I don't have one
> at
> > > the ready, but I don't mind taking a shot at improving the current
> > > situation. However, I am crunching now thru the end of the year, so
> I
> > > will give it a go in the new year.
> > > In the meantime, I would be happy to collect both suggestions for
> > > requirements and suggestions for solutions on this list or
> privately.
> > >
> > > The new year should be interesting, as the switch to the new Euro
> > > currency will demonstrate some of the chaos with locales.
> > >
> > > tex
> > >
> > > Martin Duerst wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Tex - Could you write up (short), or point to, any proposal
> > > > for how to do better than currently?
> > > >
> > > > Regards,  Martin.
> > > >
> > > > At 14:57 01/10/31 -0500, Tex Texin wrote:
> > > > >David,
> > > > >
> > > > >FWIW, I thoroughly agree that locales as we currently define and
> > > > >implement them, do not work.
> > > > >As a naming convention it is inadequate, and when you select a
> > > name, you
> > > > >are not sure what behavior you will get.
> > > > >
> > > > >I have mentioned this before, and the response is always "Yes,
> it's
> > > > >broken, but it is the best we have at the moment.".
> > > > >
> > > > >It is rather unfortunate that we have this methodology therefore,
> and
> > > > >that it is accepted, since it won't be fixed as long as this
> response
> > > > >continues.
> > > > >
> > > > >tex
> > > > >
> > > > >--
> > > > >-------------------------------------------------------------
> > > > >Tex Texin                    Director, International Business
> > > > >mailto:Texin@Progress.com    Tel: +1-781-280-4271
> > > > >the Progress Company         Fax: +1-781-280-4655
> > > > >-------------------------------------------------------------
> > >
> > > --
> > > -------------------------------------------------------------
> > > Tex Texin                    Director, International Business
> > > mailto:Texin@Progress.com    Tel: +1-781-280-4271
> > > the Progress Company         Fax: +1-781-280-4655
> > > -------------------------------------------------------------
> > >
> 
> --
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> Tex Texin                    Director, International Business
> mailto:Texin@Progress.com    Tel: +1-781-280-4271
> the Progress Company         Fax: +1-781-280-4655
> -------------------------------------------------------------

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------
Tex Texin                    Director, International Business
mailto:Texin@Progress.com    Tel: +1-781-280-4271
the Progress Company         Fax: +1-781-280-4655
-------------------------------------------------------------
"When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the
one I've never tried before."- -Mae West

Received on Wednesday, 7 November 2001 14:27:04 UTC