Arabic-Indic digits

[Shawn Steele]

"Contextual" means that it depends on the data being rendered.  I'm not a GDI guru, so I'm not entirely certain when this shows up, but I'll ask Peter :)  I think it means that if it is near native letters, then european digits get replaced with the national ones, if its by latin letters, then the digits stays european.

The statement about Kuwait is something I heard from an Arabic speaker (Egyptian), so I don't know if it is true, however from your statement it sounds like replacement of European digits can't be generalized to all arabic countries/scripts, which was my concern.

- Shawn

________________________________________
From: Martin Duerst [duerst at it.aoyama.ac.jp]
Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2008 6:37 PM
To: Shawn Steele; idna-update at alvestrand.no
Subject: Re: Arabic-Indic digits

Hello Shawn,

Thanks for your information. Some questions:

- What exactly does "contextual" mean?
- You mention Kuwait as a place where 0-9 are being preferred.
  That's new to me, but I have heard that 0-9 are preferred in
  the Westmost part of the Arab world (my guess is that's mainly
  Morocco, Algeria, and Tunesia).

Regards,    Martin.

At 04:25 08/12/12, Shawn Steele wrote:
>Content-Language: en-US
>Content-Type: multipart/alternative;boundary="_000_C9BF0238EED3634BA1866AEF14C7A9E5738A05D23DNAEXMSGC116re_"
>
>FWIW: I mentioned that Windows can replace European digits with any native digit set, and so the Arabic-Indic concern isn$BCU(B just for the Arabic-Indic digits or the Arabic locales.  The languages shipping with this behavior out of the box are:
>
>Arabic-Indic digits
>                All Arabic locales (contextual)
>                Pashto (always replaced)
>                Dari (always replaced)
>
>Arabic-Indic Extended Digits
>                Persian (contextual)
>
>Devenagari Digits
>                Nepal (always replaced)
>
>Khmer Digits
>                Khmer (always replaced)
>
>I have also been led to believe (perhaps mistaken) that in Kuwait (for one), the default behavior is wrong, and that it is preferred to use 0-9 all the time instead of the Arabic-Indic digits.
>
>Note that this behavior can be overridden for any locale/language, including English (though I don$BCU(B know why you$BCE(B do this for English).
>* Open intl.cpl (Regional and Language Options),
>* select customize,
>* change the standard digits to something interesting,
>* change $BEV(Bse native digits$B!&(Bto $BEO(Bational$B!&!&!&!&!&!&clic!&apply.!&!&>Immedia!&ly!&ouCM(Bl see a bunch of digits in windows everywhere get replaced.
>
>So for further discussions I$BCE(B rather not limit the discussion to $BEK(Bust$B!&(Bthe Arabic-Indic set of digits.
>
>- Shawn
>
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#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, Assoc. Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-#-#  http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp       mailto:duerst at it.aoyama.ac.jp