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In computing
Computing

Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and developing computer technology, computer hardware and computer software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology....
, locale is a set of parameter
Parameter

In mathematics, statistics, and the mathematical sciences, a parameter is a quantity that defines certain characteristics of systems or function s....
s that defines the user's language, country and any special variant preferences that the user wants to see in their user interface
User interface

The user interface is the aggregate of means by which people—the User s—Interaction with the system—a particular machine, device, computer program or other complex tools....
. Usually a locale identifier consists of at least a language identifier and a region identifier.

On Unix
Unix

Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
, Linux
Linux

Linux is a generic term referring to Unix-like computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Their development is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed by anyone under the terms of the GNU GPL license...
 and other POSIX
POSIX

POSIX or "Portable Operating System Interface" is the collective name of a family of related standardizations specified by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers to define the application programming interface , along with shell and utilities interfaces for software compatible with variants of the Unix operating system, altho...
-type platforms, locale identifiers are defined similar to the RFC 3066 definition of language tags, but the locale variant modifier is defined differently, and the character set is included as a part of the identifier.






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In computing
Computing

Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and developing computer technology, computer hardware and computer software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology....
, locale is a set of parameter
Parameter

In mathematics, statistics, and the mathematical sciences, a parameter is a quantity that defines certain characteristics of systems or function s....
s that defines the user's language, country and any special variant preferences that the user wants to see in their user interface
User interface

The user interface is the aggregate of means by which people—the User s—Interaction with the system—a particular machine, device, computer program or other complex tools....
. Usually a locale identifier consists of at least a language identifier and a region identifier.

On Unix
Unix

Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
, Linux
Linux

Linux is a generic term referring to Unix-like computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Their development is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed by anyone under the terms of the GNU GPL license...
 and other POSIX
POSIX

POSIX or "Portable Operating System Interface" is the collective name of a family of related standardizations specified by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers to define the application programming interface , along with shell and utilities interfaces for software compatible with variants of the Unix operating system, altho...
-type platforms, locale identifiers are defined similar to the RFC 3066 definition of language tags, but the locale variant modifier is defined differently, and the character set is included as a part of the identifier. It is defined in this format: [language[_territory][.codeset][@modifier]].

General locale settings


These settings usually include the following display (output) format settings:

  • Display language setting
  • Number formats setting
  • Date/Time formats setting
  • Timezone setting
  • Daylight saving time (DST) setting
  • Currency formats setting


Less usual, but worth mentioning, is the input format setting. This is mostly defined on a per application basis. The daylight saving time setting (DST)
Daylight saving time

Daylight saving time is the convention of advancing clocks so that afternoons have more daylight and mornings have less. Typically clocks are adjusted forward one hour near the start of spring and are adjusted backward in autumn....
 is derived from the Timezone Setting.

Furthermore, the General settings usually include the keyboard layout
Keyboard layout

A keyboard layout is any specific mechanical, visual, or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key?meaning associations of a Computer keyboard, typewriter, or other alphanumeric keyboard keyboard....
 setting.

Programming/markup language support


  • C
    C (programming language)

    C is a general-purpose computer programming language originally developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories to implement the Unix operating system....
  • C++
  • Eiffel
    Eiffel (programming language)

    Eiffel is an International Organization for Standardization-standardized, object-oriented programming language designed to enable programmers to efficiently develop extensible, reusable, reliable software....
  • Java
    Java (programming language)

    Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java ....
  • Microsoft .NET framework
  • REBOL
    REBOL

    REBOL, the Relative Expression Based Object Language , is a data exchange language and programming languageREBOL Technologies, ....
  • Ruby
    Ruby (programming language)

    Ruby is a dynamic programming language, reflection , general purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features....
  • Perl
  • PHP
    PHP

    PHP is a scripting language originally designed for producing dynamic web pages. It has evolved to include a command line interface capability and can be used in Standalone software Graphical user interface....
  • Python
    Python (programming language)

    Python is a general-purpose high-level programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python's core syntax and semantics are Minimalism , while the standard library is large and comprehensive....
  • XML


and other (nowadays) Unicode
Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
-based environments, they are defined in a format similar to RFC 3066 or one of its successors. They are usually defined with just ISO 639
ISO 639

ISO 639 is the set of International Organization for Standardization that lists short language code for language names. It was also the name of the original standard, approved in 1967 and withdrawn in 2002....
 and ISO 3166-1 alpha-2
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2

ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes are two-letter country codes defined in ISO 3166-1, part of the ISO 3166 standardization published by the International Organization for Standardization , to represent country, dependent territory, and special areas of geographical interest....
 codes.

Specifics for Microsoft platforms

Locale identifier (LCID) for unmanaged code
Managed code

Managed code is Source code that executes under the management of a virtual machine, unlike unmanaged code, which is executed directly by the computer's Central processing unit....
 on Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces ....
, a number such as 1033 for English (United States) or 1041 for Japanese (Japan). These numbers consist of a language code (lower 10 bits) and culture code (upper bits) and are therefore often written in hexadecimal
Hexadecimal

In mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal is a numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16. It uses sixteen distinct symbols, most often the symbols 0–9 to represent values zero to nine, and A, B, C, D, E, F to represent values ten to fifteen....
 notation, such as 0x0409 or 0x0411. The list of those codesets are described in character encoding
Character encoding

A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs a sequence of character from a given character set with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octet or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data through telecommunication networks and/or Computer data storage of Character in compute...
. Microsoft
Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is a multinational corporation computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of computer software products for computing devices....
 is beginning to introduce unmanaged code Application programming interface
Application programming interface

An application programming interface is a set of subroutine, data structures, class and/or Protocol provided by library and/or operating system Service s in order to support the building of applications....
s (APIs) for .NET that use this format. One of the first to be generally released is a function to mitigate issues with internationalized domain name
Internationalized domain name

An internationalized domain name is an Internet domain name that contains one or more non-ASCII characters. Such domain names could contain letters with diacritics, as required by many non-English languages, or characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Chinese character or Hindi....
s, but more are in Windows Vista
Windows Vista

Windows Vista is one member in a family of operating systems developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business Desktop computer, laptops, Tablet PCs, and media center PCs....
 Beta 1.

Beginning with Windows Vista
Windows Vista

Windows Vista is one member in a family of operating systems developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business Desktop computer, laptops, Tablet PCs, and media center PCs....
, that use RFC 4646 locale names have been introduced to replace nearly all LCID-based APIs.

See also

  • Internationalization and localization
    Internationalization and localization

    In computing, internationalization and localization are means of adapting computer software to different languages and regional differences. Internationalization is the process of designing a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes....
  • ISO 639
    ISO 639

    ISO 639 is the set of International Organization for Standardization that lists short language code for language names. It was also the name of the original standard, approved in 1967 and withdrawn in 2002....
     language code
    Language code

    A language code is a code that assigns letters or numbers as identifiers for languages. These codes are often used to organize library collections, to choose the correct localizations and translations in computing, and as a shorthand designation for forms....
    s
  • ISO 3166-1 alpha-2
    ISO 3166-1 alpha-2

    ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes are two-letter country codes defined in ISO 3166-1, part of the ISO 3166 standardization published by the International Organization for Standardization , to represent country, dependent territory, and special areas of geographical interest....
     country code
    Country code

    Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geography codes developed to represent country and dependent areas, for use in data processing and communications....
    s
  • IETF language tag
  • Common Locale Data Repository
    Common Locale Data Repository

    The Common Locale Data Repository Project, often abbreviated as CLDR, is a project of the Unicode Consortium to provide locale data in the XML format for use in computer applications....
  • Date and time notation by country
    Date and time notation by country

    Different style conventions and habits exist around the world for calendar date and times in writing and speaking. Examples:*The order that a year, month, and day are written....
  • AppLocale
    AppLocale

    AppLocale is a tool for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 by Microsoft. It is a launcher application that makes it possible to run non-Unicode applications in a locale of the user's choice....


External links

  • RFC 4646
Javadoc
Javadoc

Javadoc is a documentation generator from Sun Microsystems for generating Application programming interface documentation in HTML format from Java source code....
 API documentation
  • Article "" by Nathan C. Myers
  • - Python Library Reference
  • - Linux man page