From keld@dkuug.dk Thu Apr 25 19:09:11 1991
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Date: Thu, 25 Apr 91 19:09:11 +0200
From: Keld J|rn Simonsen <keld@dkuug.dk>
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To: wg15rin@dkuug.dk
Subject: X/open & UniForum on locales
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From: mission!allcorn
Message-Id: <9104210008.AA16677@relay1.UU.NET>
To: XoJIG@xopen
Subject: (XoJIG 57) Standard Locale Issues
Date: Sat Apr 20 15:59:28 1991
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Comment: (XoJIG 57) 

This message is an expansion of the notes on the Standard Locales
issue discussion that occured during the Distributed Locales small
working group session at the Laguna Hills meeting. (See XoJIG message
seq 53.) It also contains some thoughts of my own on some of the issues 
related to standard locales.

1. Registration Issues:

   A. Authority
      
      - Who should be the registration authority?

        (ISO would seem to be the right choice but it is not at all
        clear how we go about getting them to agree to do it.)

   B. Granularity

      - Should entire locales (i.e. complete sets of values for
        each of the categories that make up a locale) or individual
        categories be registered? Or, should it be possible to
        register both?
      
      - If it is possible to register both, should it be possible
        to define a locale by simply referring to registered 
        categories for some or all of the categories within the
        locale being registered?

      - Should modifiers such as X11 type be allowed? (I don't
        know what X11 type modifiers are, but someone suggested
        that they need to be considered.) 
 
   C. Content

      - What categories should be registered? Should they be 
        restricted to those defined for POSIX? Should it be 
        possible to register arbitrary categories? 

      - Should it be possible to register things such as X input
        methods? 

      - What syntax should be used for registration?

        (The syntax specified for localedef in P1003.2 is one 
        obvious possibility.) 
     
      - Should registered locales be code set specific? If not
        (and possibly even if they are), some sort of standard 
        mechanism for naming characters for LC_CTYPE and LC_COLLATE 
        is needed.

        (I feel very strongly that registered locales should not 
        be code set specific. To make them code set specific would
        require that many basic locale be re-registered every time
        a new code set comes along. Doing this would be expensive
        and error prone to say the least.

        (It should be up to the implementation to map a registered 
        "symbolic" locale to a code set specific "object" locale. 
        Note that this would be consistent with the way localedef
        works.

        (One problem related to registering "symbolic" locales
        is how to deal with ideographic characters. Having to 
        explicitly name, for example, every Kanji character when
        registering a Japanese locale is not a task many people
        would relish. One way to solve this problem might be to
        allow references to be made to the standards the define
        repertoires of ideographic characters within locale 
        definitions.) 

   D. Naming Conventions

      - Should registered locales be identified by number (as are 
        code sets in the ISO coded character set registry), or by
        some form of descriptive name, or by both?

      - If by name

        - What form should the name take?

          For example, should they be descriptive in some standard
          way (e.g. French/Canada/dictionary)? If so, how?

        - Conventions should probably be established so that 
          non-standard locales can be named in a way that guarantees
          that they will not conflict with registered locale names.
          What should the conventions be?

        - Whatever naming conventions are established should be
          consistent with, and not conflict with, existing naming 
          conventions, etc., such as ISO 659, ISO 3166, ISO Font
          registry, ECMA... 

   E. Conformance

      - Must an implementation support all of the "standard" 
        categories of a registered locale to claim conformance 
        for an implementation of the locale?

      - If arbitrary categories can be registered, can an
        implementation claim conformanace for an implemetation
        of a registered locale even if it does not support
        some or all of the arbitrary categories registered as 
        part of the locale?

2. When does a standard locale become non-standard? 

        See Eamon's list in message # 53.

Bill Allcorn
Unisys Corporation
uunet!mission!allcorn; (714)380-6447