Re: [XSLT2.0] format-date() - country

qt-2003Nov0301-01 format-date() - country

This is the official response from the XSL Working Group.

The XSL WG reviewed your comment on 2004-02-12 and found that
for point 1. it is reasonable to provide the country parameter,
as is is needed for complete and correct support for many calendars
and that the parameter should be retained. For point 2. the WG
accepted that the text is incorrect and needs text change.
For detailed responses on each point see below.

We trust that this meets with your approval.

Point 1:

You are quite right to observe that extensive research is required
to identify the influence of the "country" argument if an implementation
wished to support ALL possible values. A similar situation is present
for e.g. collations, where it would be an almost insurmountable task
to identify and implement correct linguistic collations for ALL
languages.

The first sentence of 16.5.2 states the expectations of the WG as
to who is going to implement the various parts of date formatting
functionality; we expect vendors to determine the markets that they
wish to support and implement accordingly. To take a specific example:

A vendor whose Thai market is important would support the Thai
language, the Buddhist Era calendar, and the Thailand country code
(the last one to support the change of the date of the new year
which took place in 1941). Note that without the country parameter
you have no reasonable way of enabling a vendor to support this
"correction" to a rather recent date! To use xml:lang for this would
be wrong!

Point 2:

You are correct that the last sentence is misleading. It should read:

  The geographical area identified by a country code is defined by the
  boundaries as they existed at the time of the date to be formatted,
  or the present-day boundaries for dates in the future.

Received on Thursday, 12 February 2004 14:41:56 UTC