[Fwd]: Response to Mark's message]

[Martin Duerst]

At 10:53 03/04/09 -0700, Addison Phillips [wM] wrote:

>I'm happy to infer a Java (or other platform/language) Locale value from
>the RFC3066 code, plus whatever other contextual information is
>applicable to my platform. Hence my interest in fixing the "script" problem.
>
>OTOH, there has to be some guideline for developers to follow when
>interpreting the language code. I want other software to make decisions
>as similar to mine as possible, in order to obtain consistent results.

There are two ways to interpret 'consistent results'. One means
that all implementations on the same platform map the same
3066 codes to the same internal codes (and back). See below
for more on that.

Another means that you actually want to e.g. have exactly the same
date format on different platforms. The only reasonable solution
I see for this one is:
1) Define some format for describing the various conventions.
2) Reference that format by an URI.



>I'm suggesting that we might need a specific document that says how to
>map a language identifier for use as a "locale". If that document could
>actually *be* RFC3066bis, it would save a lot of confusion. The text
>might say, for example:
>
>//---------
>Although RFC3066bis identifiers are intended solely to identify natural
>languages, data processing may sometimes need to infer certain
>culturally and regionally affected settings or preferences from them.
>These settings are sometimes referred to as a "locale" and are generally
>constructed using identifiers that are similar to or indistinguishable
>from some RFC3066bis identifiers.

I'm okay up to there. Please also add some language indicating that
many of these settings are actually very much related to language
(date formatting, number formatting).


>When inferring these preferences from
>RFC3066bis, you should xxxxxx.....
>//------

I think it doesn't work for RFC 3066bis to give such instructions.
We could try to give them for Windows, Java, Linux, the Mac,...
But where to start, and where to stop? The only way this can work
is by the relevant platform providers to do the conversion to their
internal codes. This is very similar to date formats,...
ISO 8061 doesn't say how to map these formats to platform-internal
formats, but each platform has the necessary code to do the conversion.


Regards,    Martin.