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Locale

Locale is a collection of user inputs, including keyboard layout, sorting order, and the formats used for numbers, dates, currencies, and times.

• User locale. You can set a locale to provide data to users in their native format, including the formatting of numeric information, such as numbers, times, dates, and currencies. Typically, user locales contain the symbols for the thousand separator, decimal point, negative number representation, time separator, short data format, long data format, and currency symbols. A country specification is often used to select default values for user locale settings.

  NOTE:  A user locale is not a language setting and has no relationship to input languages, keyboard layouts, character sets, or user interface languages.

• Input locale. This locale is used to describe the language being entered and the input method, which could be a particular keyboard layout or a speech-to-text converter.

  Keyboard layout is a defined input locale that correlates the keys on the keyboard to their subsequent character definition mapping within the code page of the operating system.

• System locale. If you are using a Microsoft Windows operating system, this is a system-wide setting that designates which code page is used as the default for all users on the system. If you are using a UNIX operating system, the settings for formatting and code page locales are not systemwide. These code pages and fonts allow non-Unicode applications to run as they would on a system localized to the language of the system locale.

  NOTE:  If you are using a Windows operating you must restart the system after changing a system locale.

• Sorting order or collation. The process of ordering units of textual information. Collation is usually specific to a particular language. The Unicode Collation Algorithm defines a complete, unambiguous, and specified ordering for all characters in the Unicode Standard.

Locale Usage

You can use locale rules to vary the appearance of data for different regions of your implementation. Typically, this data would include dates and times, numbers, and currencies.

For example, the date and time thirty minutes past four in the afternoon on May nine, year two thousand-and-one can appear differently depending on the locale. It may appear as:

• 05/09/01, 04:30 PM, if the locale used is English American.
• 09.05.2001, 16:30, if the locale used is German.

Locales also specify thousand separators and decimal symbols for numbers. They determine the position of the currency symbol in relation to the currency amount. They also contain rules for how data is sorted (collated). For example, the words OIL, SOIL, and ÖL are sorted differently depending on the locale:

• In German the words sorted alphabetically would be: OIL, ÖL, SOIL. In German, the character O is not distinguished from Ö.
• In Swedish the words sorted alphabetically would be: OIL, SOIL, ÖL. In Swedish, the character Ö is different from O.

Locales also guide what characters are available through the computer keyboard. Users can remap their keyboards through the locale setting to get access to additional characters when typing.