Re: Same language, two locales (RE: Locale string for

From: Keld Jørn Simonsen (keld@dkuug.dk)
Date: Sat Sep 02 2000 - 09:04:34 EDT


On Fri, Sep 01, 2000 at 08:11:02PM -0800, Doug Ewell wrote:
> /|/|ike Ayers <Mike_Ayers@bmc.com> wrote:
>
> > BTW, I've gotten confused during this thread over the naming of
> > country codes, etc. There are ISO specs, RFCs, POSIX specs (and
> > more?)... Is this information conveniently summarized anywhere so
> > that I may enlighten myself?
>
> Here's a convenient, if perhaps oversimplified, summary.
>
> The standard for two-letter language codes is ISO 639-1. There is also
> an ISO 639-2 (actually, there are two variants) that specifies three-
> letter language codes.

Well, ISO 639-1 does not exist, yet. It is rather ISO 639 that is
being used.

> POSIX locale names are also formed from 639-1 language codes and 3166-1
> country codes. Unlike in RFC 1766, the elements are separated by an
> underscore rather than a hyphen. POSIX uses this language/country code
> to represent not only the language and local dialect, but all the
> attributes of a locale setting, such as decimal separator, thousands
> separator, currency symbol, default date format, etc. It is widely
> regarded as inadequate for covering even a reasonable subset of locale
> possibilities.

However, this is the methodology that everybody uses, inclusive
Microsoft (viz. another email here) and what RFC 1766 is modelled after.
It works well for the programs I am using. What are the problems that you
percieve here?

Kind regards
Keld



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