In computing, locale is a set of parameters that defines the user's language, country and any special variant preferences that the user wants to see in their user interface. Usually a locale identifier consists of at least a language identifier and a region identifier. RAM (Random Access Memory) Look up computing in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The factual accuracy of this article is disputed. ... The user interface is the part of a system exposed to users. ...

Locale identifiers can be defined in several ways:

• On Unix, Linux and other POSIX-type platforms, they are defined similar to the RFC 3066 definition, but the locale variant modifier is defined differently, and the charset is included as a part of the identifier. It is defined in this format:

[language[_territory][.codeset][@modifier]].

Filiation of Unix and Unix-like systems Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX®) is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Douglas McIlroy. ... Linux (IPA pronunciation: ) is a Unix-like computer operating system. ... POSIX or Portable Operating System Interface[1] is the collective name of a family of related standards specified by the IEEE to define the application programming interface (API) for software compatible with variants of the Unix operating system. ... A character encoding or character set (sometimes referred to as code page) consists of a code that pairs a sequence of characters from a given set with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the storage of text in computers...

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

The above formats may or may not include also an input format setting. The latter, that is the input format setting, is also mostly defined on a per application basis. The Daylight Saving Time Setting (DST) is derived from the Timezone Setting. Though DST is common in Europe and North America, most of the worlds people do not use it. ... TimeZone is an Internet forum for discussion of watches and horology. ...

An exception to the rule is the

• Keyboard Layout Setting

which declares only an input setting but not specifically an output setting, since most keyboards are not an output device. Computers and other typing devices offer many different keyboard layouts for inputting data in different languages. ...

Programming/Markup Language Support

(in order of appearance, most recent first)

• Microsoft .Net framework
• XML
• Rebol
• Ruby
• PHP
• Python
• Java
• Eiffel
• C++
• Perl
• C

and other (nowadays) Unicode-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 and ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes. Microsoft . ... The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C-recommended general-purpose markup language that supports a wide variety of applications. ... REBOL, the Relative Expression Based Object Language (pronounced [rebl]), is a data exchange and programming language designed specifically for network communications and distributed computing. ... Ruby is a reflective, dynamic, object-oriented programming language. ... PHP is a reflective programming language originally designed for producing dynamic web pages. ... Python is a high-level programming language first released by Guido van Rossum in 1991. ... Java is a programming language originally developed by Sun Microsystems and released in 1995. ... Eiffel is an ISO-standardized object-oriented programming language designed for extensibility, reusability, reliability and programmer productivity. ... For a WikiBook on programming with C++, see Wikibooks: C++ Programming. ... Programming Republic of Perl logo Perl, also Practical Extraction and Report Language (a backronym, see below), is an interpreted procedural programming language designed by Larry Wall. ... C is a general-purpose, block structured, procedural, imperative computer programming language developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system. ... Unicode is an industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in any of the worlds writing systems. ... ISO 639 is one of several international standards that lists short codes for language names. ... ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes are two-letter country codes in the ISO 3166-1 standard to represent countries and dependent areas. ...

Microsoft Platform(s) Specifics

• Locale Identifier (LCID) for unmanaged code on Microsoft Windows, 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 notation, such as 0x0409 or 0x0411. The list of those codesets are described in character encoding.
  • Microsoft is beginning to introduce unmanaged code APIs for .NET that use this format. One of the first to be generally released is a function to mitigate issues with internationalized domain names [1], but more are in Windows Vista Beta 1.

In Microsoft Windows terminology, managed code is computer instructions — that is, code — executed by a CLI-compliant virtual machine, such as Microsofts . ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, the lead section of this article may need to be expanded. ... In mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal, base-16, or simply hex, is a numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16, usually written using the symbols 0–9 and A–F, or a–f. ... A character encoding or character set (sometimes referred to as code page) consists of a code that pairs a sequence of characters from a given set with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the storage of text in computers... Microsoft Corporation, (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKSE: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual revenue of US$44. ... An application programming interface (API) is a source code interface that a computer system or program library provides to support requests for services to be made of it by a Length. ... Example of Arabic IDN Example of Chinese IDN Example of Greek IDN Example of Hebrew IDN Example of Hindi IDN An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet domain name that (potentially) contains non-ASCII characters. ... Windows Vista is a line of graphical operating systems used on personal computers, including home and business desktops, notebook computers, Tablet PCs, and media centers. ...

See also

• Internationalization and localization
• ISO 639 language codes
• ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes
• IETF language tag
• Common Locale Data Repository
• Date and time notation by country
• AppLocale

Internationalization and localization[1] are means of adapting products such as publications, hardware or software for non-native environments, especially other nations and cultures. ... ISO 639 is one of several international standards that lists short codes for language names. ... A language code is a system that assigns short letter codes to languages. ... ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes are two-letter country codes in the ISO 3166-1 standard to represent countries and dependent areas. ... IETF language tags are defined by BCP 47, which is currently RFC 4646 and RFC 4647, published in September 2006. ... 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. ... Different stylistic conventions and habits exist around the world in order to express date and time in written and spoken language. ... AppLocale is a tool for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 by Microsoft. ...

External links

Look up locale in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• RFC 4646
• Language Subtag Registry
• Common Locale Data Repository
• java.util.Locale Javadoc API documentation
• LCID information from Microsoft
• POSIX Environment Variables
• Low Level Technical details on defining a POSIX locale
• ICU Locale Explorer
• Debian Wiki on Locales
• Article "The Standard C++ Locale" by Nathan C. Myers
• Internationalization services - Python Library Reference
• locale(7): Description of multi-language support - Linux man page
• Apache C++ Standard Library Locale User's Guide