Subject: Re: strftime %X control: how?
To: Brian Ginsbach <ginsbach@NetBSD.org>
From: Greg A. Woods <woods@planix.com>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 07/07/2007 15:28:49
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At Sat, 7 Jul 2007 16:41:48 +0000, Brian Ginsbach wrote:
Subject: Re: strftime %X control: how?
>=20
> On Fri, Jul 06, 2007 at 05:42:45PM -0400, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> > At Fri, 6 Jul 2007 14:29:10 +0000, Brian Ginsbach wrote:
> > Subject: Re: strftime %X control: how?
> > >
> > > Does anyone know if there is a definitive source for the required
> > > LC_TIME data: short weekday names, long weekday names, short month
> > > names, long month names, ante-meridiem/post-meridiem, date and
> > > time (%c), date (%x), Time (%X), and 12 hour clock?
> >
> > The Single UNIX Specification Version 2, of course!
> >
> >     http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908799/toc.htm
> >
>=20
> Does this actually specify the values?  e.g. date =3D "%d/%m/%y"
>=20
> I was looking for a difinitive source for each specific locales'
> data...

Only the POSIX locale definition is given, eg. here:

http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/basedefs/xbd_chap07.html#tag_=
07_03_05

(search down for "The LC_TIME category definition of the POSIX locale
follows" to find the actual localedef(1) source for the definition)

I don't think there is a definitive source for any national locale
definitions, unless perhaps some standards body in the given
jurisdiction has produced and published such definitions.

For example there may have been work afoot in the Canadian government
once upon a time to create an fr_CA set of definitions for POSIX
systems, probably within Transport Canada since they were at the time by
far the most progressive developers and users of open standards for
information technology.

There are of course localedef input sources already freely available
from several open-source projects, including Open Solaris.  They may not
be definitive, but they exist and they're quite complete, and they're
already well maintained by other people.

Perhaps the best thing for NetBSD to do would be to simply include the
entire contents of /usr/lib/localedef from Open Solaris and update it
new releases are made available.  It would seem to me that the license
on Open Solaris is the most compatible with NetBSD's licensing needs.
Probably the source for all the tools and some libraries could also
similarly be borrowed too.


http://src.opensolaris.org/source/xref/g11n/src/locale_src/base/


BTW, I just found the following interesting paper, which discusses many
of the issues surrounding localization efforts for free and open-source
software, including the creation of definitive localizations for
standards based systems in various countries in the Asia Pacific region:

http://www.iosn.net/l10n/foss-localization-primer/foss-localization-primer.=
pdf

--=20
						Greg A. Woods

H:+1 416 218-0098 W:+1 416 489-5852 x122 VE3TCP RoboHack <woods@robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>       Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>

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