RE: TR35

From: Peter Constable (petercon@microsoft.com)
Date: Thu May 13 2004 - 09:40:03 CDT

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    > Well, it is true that what I really search for is not *exactly* the
    > formatting locale, but rather another wider information, which would
    be the
    > mind setting of the writer.

    Precisely. The locale info only tells you how a number would have been
    formatted by the author's system, not what the author in fact did. When
    you receive a document, being told what the system would have done
    doesn't tell you anything useful. Not unless the document you receive
    was generated by the system -- and I'm guessing that in many such
    situations what's exchanged isn't a document per se but data structures
    in which numbers are in some pre-defined representation not formatted
    for the user.

    I'm not saying that there is never a need to exchange locale-setting
    info. Only that I don't think it's appropriate in general to tag
    documents (by which I don't mean an accounting spreadsheet or an
    order-entry record) for things like number formatting, and so such info
    should not be included in attributes like xml:lang.

    > I have another example, but I cannot expose it here publicly, it is
    related
    > to some proprietary software.

    If something is going on internal to proprietary software, then there
    are no rules. This is only about public interchange.

    Peter
     
    Peter Constable
    Globalization Infrastructure and Font Technologies
    Microsoft Windows Division



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