Dotan Cohen wrote:
No, my locale is not US English:
$ locale
LANG=he_IL.utf8
This is the only relevant setting which is read from the OS when a
default locale has to be evaluated.
I figured that I could get away with not posting that as I posted this:
$ date +%x
2009-12-08
The program accepts your locale using its own setup for this
particular locale, so your document will look exactly the same on other
systems.
I am not sure that I am following you. Do you mean that Calc ignores
the formatting options of locale ab_CD.utf8 and substitutes it's own
formatting based on the name of the locale?
Yes, you are following me correctly.
It makes no sense to use the current system's customized locale
settings when documents have to be exchangable across systems.
ODF, like DOC, is intended to describe documents meant to be
reprocessed for printing. ODF is _not_ intended for electronic
document exchange (neither is DOC). The use of the format for this
purpose is abuse of the format, in fact you will find that different
printer drivers, default paper sizes, and other factors will affect
how and ODF (or DOC) files appear on the screen. The format intended
for electronic document exchange is PDF, and even that is a subset of
PS which also describes pages for printing.
Since ODF is for printing, OOo shows figures in the same built-in
styles, regardless of your system setup. In case of "Default" it assumes
one distinct locale. to be used as default.
There is no
bug, since the number formatting behaves exactly as it has been designed
intentionally.
There may or may not be a programming error (see my locale) however
this is unexpected behaviour with no obvious solution. Programming
error or poor design decision, it is a bug.
You refuse to use number formatting and styles, so you've got to live
with the defaults.
Simply use the given formatting facilities, styles in particular, in order
to override the plain defaults.
That is not practical when I have many new documents to create daily.
Neither is a "default document". I need an application setting, not a
particular file setting.
Templates and styles are the most fundamental concepts to understand
before you start creating many new documents on a daily basis.
You can set the application wide locale, which affects all numeric data
in all components (cells in Writer and Calc, numeric fields in Writer
and Base).
Regarding Calc, you may create a new spreadsheet template
(File>Templates>Save...) with your preferred number format locale in
cell style "Default" (root of cell style hierarchy). When you need
another locale context, change the number format locale for this
particular style.
You can make your new spreadsheet template the default template to be
used with Ctrl+N or File>New>Spreadsheet
(File>Templates>Orignize...Command:Make Default)
The templates organizer lets you copy styles between documents and
templates (Ctrl+Drag&Drop).
Btw: The format of a number is completely irrelevant as long as the value is
the correct number. No calculation result depends on number formatting.
8/12, 12/8, 2009/12/08, it's all the same day number 40155 or 4015500%,
$40155.00, 40.155,00€, ...
That is nice for the computer, but the human needs to understand the
data. When I read 9/2/2005 I see it as the ninth of February. So far
as I am concerned, it could be nothing but. I really don't know or
care how the computer sees it.
Your data are incomprehensible if the computer processes "1/2" as "1st
of February", where the user reads "February 2nd".
Specify your locales explicitly. Make a note that all figures and dates
use US American style or whatever.
Alternatively, you may decide to use the "Default" locale, which
defaults to the same "en-US style" on every US American system
(12/31/1999 and 1,234.99), the same Hebrew style on every Hebrew system
(31/12/1999 and 1,234.99) and the same Swedish style on every Swedish
system (1999-12-31 and 1 234,99).
The office user may set his/her preferred default locale in the general
locale settings or let OOo read one distinct locale from the system's
general language.
This is simple, comprehensible, reproducible and will not distort a
document's layout due to some user's exotic system preferences.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected]
For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
