"Locale" is a mechanism used in the Web, Java, and many other technologies to establish user interface language, presentation formats, and application behavior. Many application developers make use of locales and presume their applications now have correct international behavior. This session will describe the locale mechanism, and introduce some of the design and operational problems with locales. Recent progress in locales will also be reported.

This session will benefit anyone that uses language-country style identifiers to indicate user preferences or language properties in software or markup languages. As many developers have incorrect expectations for locale identifiers, this session can help you avoid the pitfalls that cause incorrect behavior in web and other applications.