From: Jukka K. Korpela (jkorpela@cs.tut.fi)
Date: Fri Sep 16 2005 - 01:43:40 CDT
On Fri, 16 Sep 2005, Christopher Fynn wrote:
> eflarup@yahoo.com wrote:
>
>> This would only happen if we were to create a new
>> locale (eu_EU) and force everybody in the euro zone to
>> adopt that.
>>
>> Elsebeth
>
> And what language would "eu" be ???
Is this a trick question? The code "eu" means the Basque language
(euskara).
The point is that although locales are very often presented to users as a
matter of choosing a country or area, and although the very name "locale"
suggests locality at least as the primary issue, it is currently
impossible to specify locale settings as applying to a country or other
geographic area independently of language. Territory codes can only be
used as a subcode after a language code.
I hope this can be fixed somehow, making language and territory
orthogonal aspects of "localeness". There are few
localization-relevant things that can be reasonable described as
belonging to a form of a language as spoken in a particular country, as
opposite to the language as a whole. (Use of quotation marks in British
vs. U.S. English comes into my mind, but it seems that currently CLDR
defines the British English usage as applying to all forms of English. Oh
well.) The default time zone would appear to be one (though for some
countries, the country code alone would not imply a meaningful default).
However, this raises the question whether things like en_GB and en_US
should be kept as separate from the territory setting. After all, an
American living in the UK might prefer to see quotation marks used in the
U.S. English style, yet see times displayed in the time zone used in
Britain, even if the display format is in U.S. English style (assuming
it differs from British English).
I have the uncanny feeling of having opened a can of worms. But there
seems to be so much confusion in what has been put into country-specific
sublocales. For example, for some languages, there is nothing about
quotation marks in the language locale, only in country-specific
sublocales.
-- Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
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