Re: locales

The problem is that one person's bare minimum is another persons wild extravagance (or privacy issue). For example, one of your examples was:

>Religions and Sub-Groups (like Protestant, Lutheran or Reformed) 

I don't think think of that at all as a bare minimum. The fact that I am a devout atheist is my own business -- not something for a "locale". In another example, currency is important to many applications, but completely irrelevent to others. With an XML format where all elements are optional, defined so that IF a tag is present, it has a particular interpretation, then that is about as good as it gets.

Mark

BTW, if you followed the link I sent, you'd see that we are looking at the Euro conversion in the next version of ICU.

—————

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: David_Possin@i2.com 
  To: Mark Davis 
  Cc: nelocsig@yahoogroups.com ; stopping@bizwonk.com ; www-international@w3.org ; www-international-request@w3.org 
  Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2001 09:30
  Subject: Re: locales



  What I am trying to get out of this discussion is to be able to identify a user's locale, especially for an anonymous user without personalization, and the user's language. The coupling of language_region is useless for a global web application, I even doubt it makes much sense on a local operating system. Travelling globally with a notebook pc I might want to maintain my UI language, but change the locale depending on where I am. 

  There is a fine line between a user's locale and a user's personalization. I am trying to identify the bare minimum locale without personalization, and language is a personal preference to me. Being bilingual I would like to be able to set my computer to de_US or en_DE sometimes .... 

  I have created the Yahoo.Groups forum for locale discussions - please feel free to join, everybody: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/locales 

  David Possin



       "Mark Davis" <mark@macchiato.com> 
        Sent by: www-international-request@w3.org 
        11/08/01 10:59 AM 

               
                To:        "Suzanne M. Topping" <stopping@bizwonk.com>, <www-international@w3.org>, "Nelocsig \(E-mail\)" <nelocsig@yahoogroups.com> 
                cc:         
                Subject:        Re: locales 



  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.
  >
  >
  >