Talk:Locale (computer software)

Merge
I'm not sure this should necessarily be merged. There is a great deal more that could be said about locale: even without getting into e-commerce considerations: beyond choice of language, there are probably 15-20 aspects of locale, ranging from the formats of dates and times (and, for that matter, choice of calendar) and what character is used as the decimal point to paper sizes to collation rules. I could easily imagine enough to say about locale to constitute an article. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:25, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)

Pronunciation
Could someone with the necessary expertise please add the pronunciation (BrE != AmE?) of "Locale"? Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.49.101.202 (talk) 14:04, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Locale topic should definitely be expanded
I agree that so much more information could be presented regarding what "locale" really ends up meaning in practical terms within system implementations. One could even argue that the notion of "locale" isn't effectively addressed by the built-in locale support of all the various computing environments. For example, the baked-in fallback rules around resolving locale-sensitive data processing are often in direct conflict with the functional requirements of a system. Imagine for a moment an ecommerce Web site in the US marketing its wares and services to the Spanish and Chinese speaking communities within the US. Never mind that Java currently doesn't provide "zh_US" and "es_US" locales, but even if they did, they wouldn't likely behave as expected/needed. If "*_US" fails to accommodate a processing request of some sort, then "zh" or "es" will gladly format the data for the US-based user as though he was in China or Spain, respectively. This can be particularly problematic when working with currency values and time zone math. IGLOBALIZE 23:31, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

It would be interesting if someone could pull together some history of the locale abstraction ... It's not totally obvious why location and language ought to have anything to do with one another: I, e.g., speak U.K. English, but I've lived in numerous countries where English is not the native language ... I want search results, currency, etc. related to my location, but my language preference is invariant ... It's always struck me as interesting that someone thought it reasonable to conflate these issues, and it would be fascinating to understand the history behind these decisions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.130.219.194 (talk) 17:47, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

What's with the Unix commands??
Why is there a list of unix commands on a page that has nothing to do with them? I see no reason at all for having the {unix commands} on the page, shouldn't it be removed?--62.142.59.83 12:46, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Missing commands
What are the commands to get the locale for any system? I think in Linux the information would be in LC_CTYPE, but I am not sure. And I have no clue about Windows. Albmont 18:50, 5 June 2007 (UTC)


 * In Linux, the bash terminal command 'man locale' is informative.--Memethuzla (talk) 11:08, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

ISO 15897 does not define the claimed format
This page claims [language[_territory][.codeset][@modifier]] is the format for a locale as defined by ISO 15897, however I can find no such definition in that standard. At most it seems to define language_territory in section 6.8 but otherwise diverges from the claimed format. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BBilge (talk • contribs) 12:31, 27 June 2016 (UTC)


 * It's also weird that there are square brackets around the entire thing, seeming to indicate that an empty string is a standard-conforming locale, which should not actually be the case. --Regenspaziergang !? 21:17, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Programming Locale
I'm looking for a reference to this term. It used to be widely used during my days working in globalisation but I cannot find a reference now. It refers to the implicit locale within programming languages and text-based data formats that dictates the format used to represent floating point, dates, times, booleans, etc. Many people will take it for granted that the associated language or data-format specification will cover this, but not all specifications will use the same formats. Hence, it is a principle rather than a specific locale. Even to this day, software designers can make errors by writing data to a file in the end-user's locale rather than the prescribed programming locale of that data format. Hence, the topic is sufficiently important that it needs a small section in this topic.TonyP (talk) 19:54, 8 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Here is a link to a description of this notional locale: What is the Programming Locale?, but Wikipedia may not consider this to be a reliable source.TonyP (talk) 10:41, 22 July 2020 (UTC)