Marco Cimarosti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On my experience, however, the current practice of having one "monetary > settings" record for each locale is completely broken. This practice assumes > that, e.g., Italians only need amounts in liras or euros. But it is clear > that foreign currencies are needed in many instances, so there also is an > Italian way of formatting US dollars or Japanese yen.
This goes double for the practice of assuming only one legal date format for each locale. It's really laughable to read, for example, that the U.S. ONLY uses m/d/yy. I know lots of Americans who use m-d-yy or m-d-yyyy, and I use yyyy-mm-dd without confusing too many people. Kano lists dd/mm/yy for English-speaking Canada, which I know not to be true for many English-speaking Canadians. Likewise "negative currency amounts." This is almost exclusively the professional domain of accountants and bookkeepers -- nobody would write "I won ($200) in Vegas last week" to indicate a loss -- and they follow the conventions set by their industry or company, not necessarily their country. Locale systems that force you to pick one immutable set of conventions for a given country are broken in general. I remember having to tell MS-DOS that I was in South Africa or someplace, just to get my directory listing the way I wanted it. *nix systems that start with "fr_FR" and then allow you to define "fr_FR-EURO" or something really aren't much better; what if I want to deviate from the pre-defined locale in four or five ways instead of just one? -Doug Ewell Fullerton, California
