Re: locales

Mark,

I am not sure what the right answer is, but it is clear that anyone with
a need to determine user preference for any purpose, seems to consider
lang-country the logical place to start, despite all the comments about
it being inexact and imprecise.

Personally, I don't think we should roll everything into one thing
called "locale", but I think its ok to have the discussion of what
should and shouldn't be. Those that shouldn't can then start defining
some other mechanism for those purposes.

The XML proposal is good, but I would also have a privacy concern for a
profile specific to me, if it included some of the points you outlined
(religion, party, etc.).

Also, locales (as I understand them) are only meant to derive starting
preferences which can be overridden. That should give us room to be at
least a little imprecise and also to limit the scope.

tex

Mark Davis wrote:
> 
> I have some doubts as to this project along these lines. Currency and
> Timezone are certainly orthogonal to what is currently thought of as a
> locale. This does not mean that they are unimportant (in ICU we have always
> had timezone support, and looking at the currency issue for our next release
> (see http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/ > Docs & Papers > design >
> currency.html), but I have doubts as to one wants to call them part of a
> "locale".
> 
> What some people appear to want is some structured way to indicate and/or
> communicate a raft of information about a client's preferences ("client" in
> a broad sense -- maybe "user" would be a better term). That would presumably
> include the traditional features of a locale, such as how dates are
> formatted, but may also -- *depending on the application* -- include
> currency, timezone, preferred character set, smoker/non-smoker, vegetarian
> or not, music preference, religion, party affiliation, favorite charity,
> etc.
> 
> Some of these can be bundled up with a textual shorthand, such as USD for US
> dollar, or "en-US" for date/time/number/sorting conventions. Many people,
> however, customize their settings -- I don't use the standard US dates on my
> machines, I use the ISO 2001-12-31 style -- so the standard locales don't
> and cannot convey that information.
> 
> Rather than some ad-hoc extension to "en-US-CAD-PTZ" to try to capture only
> some clumsy fraction of this, what it really sounds like is desired is an
> XML format for interchange "user preferences". With that, one could capture
> things such as the fact that my normal date/time/number formats are en-US,
> but that I want "YYYY-MM-DD" for dates. I suspect a good deal of this is
> going on already in the many groups looking at XML interchange of business
> data.
> 
> Mark
> 
> —————
> 
> Ὀλίγοι ἔμφονες πολλῶν ἀφρόνων φοβερώτεροι — Πλάτωνος
> [For transliteration, see http://oss.software.ibm.com/cgi-bin/icu/tr]
> 
> http://www.macchiato.com
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Suzanne M. Topping" <stopping@bizwonk.com>
> To: <www-international@w3.org>; "Nelocsig (E-mail)"
> <nelocsig@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2001 07:23
> Subject: RE: valid locales ---> was Re: bilingual websites
> 
> > Questions about this topic came up recently on another list, and caused
> > me to wonder if it might be "better" to offer user selectable options
> > for various locale-related functions, rather than trying to devise what
> > individual preferences or requirements might be?
> >
> > For example, UIs could default to the language used by the operating
> > system, and could start with "default" formatting etc. settings based on
> > the OS as well. But perhaps for optimal user satisfaction, we should
> > offer dropdowns next to date, time, currency, address, title etc. fields
> > which would allow users to choose how they wanted data displayed, and
> > have the formats changed on the fly.
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Peter_Constable@sil.org [mailto:Peter_Constable@sil.org]
> > Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2001 9:16 AM
> > To: www-international@w3.org
> > Subject: Re: valid locales ---> was Re: bilingual websites
> >
> >
> >
> > On 10/31/2001 12:47:09 PM David_Possin@i2.com wrote:
> >
> > >So far we have ISO codes for language (I prefer language group) and for
> > country
> > >(I prefer region). But there is not standard definition that tells me
> > which
> > >combinations are valid. Therefore I assume that any combination is
> > valid and
> > >legal and can be used. WRONG!
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > >Let me describe 2 simple workflows our customers require. A major
> > online
> > >bookseller wants to display the site in the user's language and the
> > user's
> > >currency... The bookseller wants to
> > >offer Spanish titles with Mexican preferences in US dollars.
> >
> >
> >

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------
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 Thursday, 8 November 2001 14:24:31 UTC