Re: Internationalization: How to bring the locale in line
Re: Internationalization: How to bring the locale in line
- Subject: Re: Internationalization: How to bring the locale in line
- From: Severin Kurpiers <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 10:01:10 +0100
That's the idea of this system wide setting. The user himself should
decide how the numbers (weekdays, dates etc.) have to be formatted.
This formatting should be independent on a country where an application
has been written. Sure, there are examples of applications that don't
care about such localization issues, but in my opinion it should be
considered as a bug rather than as a feature :-)
As a programmer using English everyday, maybe you don't know what the
user of your application really expects? My feeling is that overwriting
the customer settings is a pretty bad idea. It is much better to let
the user decide, but only if it is really necessary. Since such a
decision has already been made (in System Preferences > International >
Format, system wide), you have to have a very important reason why your
application deserves a special treatment.
I know, it's getting philosophical... Please consider it just as a
different point of view :-)
Bye,
Severin Kurpiers
Verek Ltd.
On 5. Nov 2004, at 02:50, Uli Zappe wrote:
Am 04.11.2004 um 10:12 schrieb Severin Kurpiers:
The benefit would be that you will in any case use the current user
setting
Hm - but that's exactly what I want to avoid.
Being a German, my user setting is German. But if the app I use has no
German GUI available, I do *not* want the numbers formatted in German,
because in an English context I will interpret "1.000" most certainly
as 1 and not as 1000, thus totally misunderstanding the value
displayed.
It's a different thing with measurement units and currencies which are
unambiguous (well, at least € <> $ is).
The only real solution to this problem probably would be that users
could specify their preferred locale for various GUI languages
separately.
As long as this isn't possible, I feel that overwriting the user's
settings is the lesser evil when it comes to decimal and thousands
separators.
Bye
Uli
________________________________________________________
Uli Zappe, Solmsstraße 5, D-65189 Wiesbaden, Germany
http://www.ritual.org
Fon: +49-700-ULIZAPPE
Fax: +49-700-ZAPPEFAX
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