Re: [Bug localedata/14510] New: LC_NUMERIC wrong for various latinamerica locales

[Keld Simonsen <keld at keldix dot com>]

On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 05:54:17PM +0000, law at redhat dot com wrote:
> http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14510
> 
>              Bug #: 14510
>            Summary: LC_NUMERIC wrong for various latin america locales
>            Product: glibc
>            Version: 2.17
>             Status: NEW
>           Severity: normal
>           Priority: P2
>          Component: localedata
>         AssignedTo: unassigned@sourceware.org
>         ReportedBy: law@redhat.com
>                 CC: libc-locales@sources.redhat.com
>     Classification: Unclassified
> 
> 
> Back in November 2011, Uli checked in a large change which affected the
> LC_NUMERIC settings of various es_* locales.  This change didn't reference any
> supporting documentation.
> 
> It's now being reported that various es_* locals have the wrong LC_NUMERIC
> settings for the decimal mark and thousands separator.
> 
> First I compared the es_* locales to CLDR for LC_NUMERIC settings.  This turned
> up several differences (es_DO, es_GT, es_HN, es_MX, es_NI, es_PA, es_PE, es_PR,
> es_SV).
> 
> For each of those locales I then went in search of documents, preferably
> government documents which would show usage of the decimal mark and thousands
> separator.
> 
> 
> Mexico:
> http://www.economia.gob.mx/files/diagnostico_economia_mexicana.pdf
> 
> Dominican Republic:
> http://www.bancentral.gov.do/noticias/avisos/aviso2010-06-25.pdf
> 
> We can get grouping from this document from the Guatemala Government.  Once we
> know grouping uses ',', then the decimal mark must be '.'.
> http://www.ine.gob.gt/np/enei/ENEI2011.htm
> 
> Honduras:
> http://www.ine.gob.hn/drupal/node/175
> http://archivo.laprensa.hn/Negocios/Ediciones/2011/02/07/Noticias/Tasa-de-desempleo-de-Honduras-subio-a-44
> 
> Nicaragua:
> http://www.bcn.gob.ni/estadisticas/economicas_anuales/nicaragua_en_cifras/2010/Nicaragua_en_cifras2010.pdf
> 
> Panama:
> http://www.mef.gob.pa/portal/2011-Comunicados/2011-DISMINUYESUSTANCIALMENTEELDESEMPLEOENPANAMA.html
> 
> Puerto Rico:
> http://www.periodicolaperla.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3606:en-puerto-rico-la-tasa-de-empleo-cae-al-nivel-mas-bajo-en-la-historia&catid=93:analisis-economico&Itemid=300
> 
> El Salvador:
> http://www.minec.gob.sv/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=1:noticias-ciudadano&id=1567:encuesta&Itemid=77
> 
> All the above referenced documents show a decimal mark as '.' and the thousands
> separator as ',', which indicate glibc's localedata is wrong.
> 
> 
> Interestingly enough, Peru which was supposed to use '.' as the decimal
> separator and ',' as the thousands separator according to CLDR seems to do the
> opposite according to these government inflation and labor reports:
> 
> http://www.bcrp.gob.pe/docs/Publicaciones/Reporte-Inflacion/2010/marzo/Reporte-de-Inflacion-Marzo-2010.pdf
> http://www.inei.gob.pe/biblioineipub/bancopub/Est/Lib0909/libro.pdf
> 
> Thus es_PE is correct as-is.

I checked a few of your references. They were economic reports.
Not kind of normative specifications from a standards or language authority.
You can also in my country (Denmark) find examples of use of the decimal point, which is
not according to standards here.

I looked i the IBM national Language Support Reference Manual ("The green bible"),
that I also used as one of the sources for making many locales.
For monetary decimal point, it seems like in North America in Spanish speaking
countries, they use the point, while in South America they use the comma.

This is not far from what you report, but I think we need some more authoritative sources.

Keld