Locale-sensitive number grouping

re: Locale-sensitive number grouping

David Candy — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 05:01:11 GMT

We use the powers of 3 rule unless otherwise specified.
http://www.measurement.gov.au/index.cfm?event=object.showContent&objectID=C3CDFE95-BCD6-81AC-124CE10A492450C2 is the people in charge of measurements. Centi is legal in a strict sense. Just not to be used.

Why Australia sucessfully, and the US and UK unsucessfully, converted to metric was due to laws mandating units. You weren't even allowed to import rulers with dual markings.

Working in technical fields I can convert most units from memory (ie I don't calculate I remember the nearest answer like [all approx] 5/8th = 16 mm, 1 mile = 1600 mtr, 1 NM = 2 km, 1 chain [22 yds] = 20 metre).

I must admit that as far as humans go I'm still Imperial with feet-inches and stones-pounds. No point telling me a criminal is 1.8 m and 80 kg - I have no idea what that looks like. I'm 6' and a around 11 st.

re: Locale-sensitive number grouping

Norman Diamond — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 03:32:37 GMT

In Japan people's heights are measured in centimetres and paper sizes are measured in millimetres, so a guess is that both are probably legal. Though actually that's a meaningless guess because it doesn't matter if they're legal or not -- social conventions take priority over law, even legally. Anyway, that is how things are done. Except that Windows doesn't let us specify which metric units, so sometimes odd units pop up. Of course it's trivial to move the decimal point, but it still takes a moment to notice that we do have to move the decimal point and adjust the unit in order to compare the number to other numbers that we're accustomed to.

re: Locale-sensitive number grouping

rolfhub — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 22:30:41 GMT

Answer to David Candy

> Another thing is that centimetre is not a legal unit in Australia.
> Millimetres,
> metres, and kilometres are the units of length. Yet Word, Wordpad, IE, or
> anywhere use centimetre.

Well, that's _really_ strange, since the SI-prefixes are just that - prefixes with
fixed meaning, to be combined with every SI base unit (when applicable). So
every established prefix

exa - 10^18
peta - 10^15
tera - 10^12
giga - 10^9
mega - 10^6
kilo - 10^3
hecto - 10^2
deka - 10^1

deci - 10^(-1)
centi - 10^(-2)
milli - 10^(-3)
micro - 10^(-6)
nano - 10^(-9)
pico - 10^(-12)
femto - 10^(-15)
atto - 10^(-18)

combined (for example) with metre (or "meter" as i know it) should make a legal
unit. To have some of them but not others is quite strange.

But i guess every country has
it's fair share of strange pecularities that just make no sense but nevertheless stay that way, that's
life.

re: Locale-sensitive number grouping

David Candy — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 19:01:22 GMT

Another thing is that centimetre is not a legal unit in Australia. Millimetres, metres, and kilometres are the units of length. Yet Word, Wordpad, IE, or anywhere use centimetre (if not inches like DPI - isn't 600 dots per 25.4 mm far easier to understand) such as page margins.

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re: Locale-sensitive number grouping

rolfhub — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 01:44:18 GMT

Answer to Ken Hagan

> Following up on rolfhub...
>> But sadly cultural blindness seem to be quite common amongst americans ...
>
> That's probably because exposure to foreign cultures is so hard to get (at least
> on a day to day basis) in the US. If you live almost anywhere else on the
> planet, getting exposure to one other culture (the US) is relatively easy

Yes, but one could think that most people involved in the process of creating computer hard- and software would be using the internet often (it's just so extremely useful in many ways), getting quite some exposure to cultural differences, and getting sensitive to cultural differences that way. So that shouldn't be to much of a problem -at least- in the IT sector, but it doesn't seem to work well ...

> and in
> most of the developed world children are bi-cultural from an early age (and
> American English is probably the commonest second language).

Well, i'm not sure if it's American English, I think that most schools that teach english, teach the british variant (back in school we were told we'd be learning the "official" british english (oxford english), and that would be the normal thing around the globe), but the differences [between british and american english] seem marginal to me ... so i think you're right.

> Awareness of
> cultural variation is instinctive and compulsory almost everywhere outside the
> US, but has to be learned and is in any case optional inside it.

Yes, but on the other hand most countries are smaller that the U.S., so the inhabitants get more direct exposure to the neighbors, because they're much nearer. (And [if living in the E.U.] thanks to the E.U., they are really _close neighbors_ now, so it's much more natural to get some cultural exposure frequently.)

> Americans should try harder and we should be more constructive and gently
> persuasive in criticising them.

Agreed.

> (For the record, I'm British and have similar
> problems with living in a linguistic monoculture but with the additional
> irritant of substantial parts of that monoculture not being my own. Have
> Microsoft any plans to produce an English version of Windows?)

Are the _linguistic_ differences between great britain and the U.S.A. really that large? I got the impression that they are really minor, but of course my impression could be faulty ...

re: Locale-sensitive number grouping

Ken Hagan — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 13:15:09 GMT

Following up on rolfhub...
> But sadly cultural blindness seem to be quite common amongst americans ...

That's probably because exposure to foreign cultures is so hard to get (at least on a day to day basis) in the US. If you live almost anywhere else on the planet, getting exposure to one other culture (the US) is relatively easy and in most of the developed world children are bi-cultural from an early age (and American English is probably the commonest second language). Awareness of cultural variation is instinctive and compulsory almost everywhere outside the US, but has to be learned and is in any case optional inside it.

Americans should try harder and we should be more constructive and gently persuasive in criticising them. (For the record, I'm British and have similar problems with living in a linguistic monoculture but with the additional irritant of substantial parts of that monoculture not being my own. Have Microsoft any plans to produce an English version of Windows?)

re: Locale-sensitive number grouping

rolfhub — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 12:37:58 GMT

Answer to David Candy

> Just in case cultural blindness hides from Raymond why non americians find this
> important.

I can't speek for Raymond, but i'm quite sure he is not guilty of being cultural blind, from reading this blog, i get the impression that he is very aware of cultural differences. But sadly cultural blindness seems to be quite common amongst americans (at least that's the impression i got over the years). But that isn't the fault of Raymond (or Microsoft), of course.

> In my country many people think commas are the digit grouping character. When I
> started school they were (but not when I finished). But now software tells
> people what the standards are. We see americian standards slipping into
> everything.

Well, that's just what this blog entry is about: getting computers to use the established standard of the applying culture, so it is "just right" for the user.

> Also Monday is the Americian standard for first day of week.

Well, I think the american standard is sunday, monday is the ISO standard (widely used troughout the world), but i repeat myself (se previous posts for details).

re: Locale-sensitive number grouping

rolfhub — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 12:23:51 GMT

Answer to Norman Diamond

> Wednesday, April 19, 2006 5:45 PM by rolfhub
>> Answer to Norman Diamond
>>> But in antiquity weeks were 10 days long.
>> Yes, but I think (and hope) that no countries
>> still stick to standards THAT old ;-)

> True I think ^_^ That is, I think it's not a standard specified by law. But
> actually it's still common usage.
> 3月上旬 = the first 10 days of March
> 3月中旬 = the middle 10 days of March
> 3月下旬 = the last 10 days of March
> These used to be the first week, middle week, and last week. Of course in
> antiquity months weren't 31 days long but they weren't 30 days either, so there
> was always some slop factor in these phrases. But weeks were 10 days long.

I see. If months were always 30 days long, it would even make a nice round system. 1 year=12 months, 1 month=3 weeks=30 days, 1 week=10 days, ... would be nice.

> Also some cities acquired names based on which day of the week they had their
> market day instead of having names assigned by whatever bureaucratic procedures,
> and some of those cities still have those names. 5th Day Market is a city in
> Tokyo. I don't remember where 4th Day Market and 10th Day Market are.

That doesn't sound sensible to me, what if a city changes it's market day, does it have to change it's name also...? Quite a bit strange. But a interesting bit of history.

re: Locale-sensitive number grouping

David Candy — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 07:42:30 GMT

Just in case cultural blindness hides from Raymond why non americians find this important.

In my country many people think commas are the digit grouping character. When I started school they were (but not when I finished). But now software tells people what the standards are. We see americian standards slipping into everything. This included programming with colour/color and similar (and how many synax errors have I copped from this - millions). Also Resumes are all MSWord based templates - yuck - the word team has always made ugly documents.

Also Monday is the Americian standard for first day of week. The ISO is adopted in two americian standard based bodies. Although having read the standard I don't see that it applies to anything other than storage of dates. Just because the computer likes it I don't see that it applies to me.

The Year-Month-Day Date Format is defined for use in the following standards documents:

International Implementation:
International Standard: ISO 8601:1988
(ISO 8601 replaces ISO 2014, ISO 2015, ISO 2711, ISO 3307 and ISO 4031).

Other Major Implementations:
European Norm: EN 28601:1992.
USA Standard: ANSI X3.30-1985(R1991).
USA Standard: NIST FIPS 4-1.
Japan: JIS X 0301-1992.
Canada: CSA Z234.5:1989.
Australia: AS 3802:1997.
South Africa: ARP 010:1989.