On 10/15/2011 05:19 PM, Andreas Prilop wrote:
I return to http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2011-m10/att-0059/1999-12-31.htmlMicrosoft programs (Internet Explorer, MS Word), display this as 31/12/1999 Other programs (Firefox, Opera, OpenOffice) display this as 1999/12/31
Given that the bidi category of U+002F is CS, 1999/12/31 seems to be the correct rendering following rule W4 of the Bidi Algorithm: "A single common separator between two numbers of the same type changes to that type".
Note that this changed in version 4.0.1 of Unicode -- before that the category of U+002F was ES, which would make the correct rendering 31/12/1999 as in Microsoft programs. I can't find any archived discussion on why this particular change was made; IIRC the change of the bidi category of U+002D from ET to ES that was made at the same time was intended to *increase* consistency between Unicode conformant applications and the de facto bidi implementation in Microsoft programs.
