Different cultures use different conventions for writing the date, the time, numbers, currency, delimiting words and phrases, and quoting material.
A locale defines the behavior of a program at runtime according to a language or cultural region's conventions. Throughout the system, a locale determines the behavior of the following:
Encoding and processing of text data
Identifying the language and encoding of resource files and their text values
Rendering and layout of text strings
Interchanging text that is used for interclient text communication
Encoding and decoding for interclient text communication
Selecting the input method (that is, which codeset is generated) and the processing of text data
Font and icon files that are culturally specific
Actions and file types
User Interface Definition (UID) files
Date and time formats
Numeric formats
Monetary formats
Collation order
Format for informative and diagnostic messages and interactive responses
The Solaris environment separates language and culture-dependent information from the application and saves it outside the application.
By separating the language and culture-dependent information from the application, the developer does not need to translate, rewrite, or recompile the application for each market. The only requirement to enter a new market is to localize the external information to the local language and customs.
The locale categories are as follows:
Specifies date and time formats, including month names, days of the week, and common full and abbreviated representations.
Specifies monetary formats. Few SunOS system commands or library routines actually use this category.
Specifies the decimal separator (or radix character) and the thousands separator.
Specifies the sorting order for a locale and the string conversions required to attain this ordering.
Specifies the language in which the localized messages are written.
Specifies the language engine which provides information about language rendering. Language rendering (or text rendering) consists of text shaping and directionality.