Re: [PATCH] [BZ 14510] Fix LC_NUMERIC for various es_* locales

[Carlos O'Donell <carlos_odonell at mentor dot com>]

On 8/30/2012 11:35 AM, Jeff Law wrote:
> On 08/22/2012 05:19 PM, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
>>
>>> diff --git a/localedata/locales/es_MX b/localedata/locales/es_MX
>>> index 7a1cccc..13fa1a0 100644
>>> --- a/localedata/locales/es_MX
>>> +++ b/localedata/locales/es_MX
>>> @@ -78,7 +78,9 @@ n_sign_posn          1
>>> END LC_MONETARY
>>>
>>> LC_NUMERIC
>>> -copy "es_ES"
>>> +decimal_point        "<U002C>"
>>
>> This is wrong.
>>
>> The official Mexican standard with amendment says "comma or dot" for
>> decimal sign and common practice is "dot". Therefore decimal_point
>> should be "<U002E>."
>
> I feel like a cut-n-paste idiot.  
> My intention was for decimal_point to be <U002E>.
> The same mistake was made in several other locales in the patch.

It usually takes me 3 tries to get something right :-)
 
I'll look over the final patch in more detail once you post it again.
 
>> According to [1] on page 57 it states that the thousand separator must
>> be a "small space" (pequeño espacio), and must never be a comma,
>> point, or other symbol. There is a `thin space' <U+2009> which
>> probably serves the best purpose here. Unfortunately as you can see in
>> the ensuing discussion, every other standard uses <U+0020> (normal
>> space) instead of <U+2009>. Nobody knows why, or what would happen if
>> you used <U+2009> (non-ASCII). We assume it would get transliterated
>> to <U+0020> in the right instance, but we might hit a few bugs.
>>
>> I'm happy to accept a patch that uses either <U+0020> or <U+2009>,
>> both are forward progress on this issue for es_MX.
> Is there a preference one way or the other?  It doesn't really matter to me, though obviously my preference is to get it right so that we don't have to revisit again in the future.

Let's shoot for the moon and use <U+2009> as the Mexican specification seems to suggest.
 
Truthfully nobody knows what's going to happen if we force down a <U+2009> character into all applications using es_MX.

I'm willing to stand by the position that <U+2009> is correct, and we'll see if we need to help downstream applications with that.

I know that this doesn't often sound like a position that a distribution wants to take, but it seems like the right course of action.

Cheers,
Carlos.
-- 
Carlos O'Donell
Mentor Graphics / CodeSourcery
carlos_odonell@mentor.com
carlos@codesourcery.com
+1 (613) 963 1026