NNBSP

[Shawn Steele via Unicode]

>> If they are obsolete apps, they don’t use CLDR / ICU, as these are designed for up-to-date and fully localized apps. So one hassle is off the table.

Windows uses CLDR/ICU.  Obsolete apps run on Windows.  That statement is a little narrowminded.

>> I didn’t look into these date interchanges but I suspect they won’t use any thousands separator at all to interchange data.

Nope

>> The group separator is only for display and print

Yup, and people do the wrong thing so often that I even blogged about it. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/shawnste/2005/04/05/culture-data-shouldnt-be-considered-stable-except-for-invariant/

>> Sorry you did skip this one:

Oops, I did mean to respond to that one and accidentally skipped it.

>> What are all these expected to do while localized with scripts outside Windows code pages?

(We call those “unicode-only” locales FWIW)

The users that are not supported by legacy apps can’t use those apps (obviously).  And folks are strongly encouraged to write apps (and protocols) that Use Unicode (I’ve blogged about that too).  However, the fact that an app may run very poorly in Cherokee or whatever doesn’t mean that there aren’t a bunch of French enterprises that depend on that app for their day-to-day business.

In order for the “unicode-only” locale users to use those apps, the app would need to be updated, or another app with the appropriate functionality would need to be selected.

However, that still doesn’t impact the current French users that are “ok” with their current non-Unicode app.  Yes, I would encourage them to move to Unicode, however they tend to not want to invest in migration when they don’t see an urgent need.

Since Windows depends on CLDR and ICU data, updates to that data means that those customers can experience pain when trying to upgrade to newer versions of Windows.  We get those support calls, they don’t tend to pester CLDR.

Which is why I suggested an “opt-in” alt form that apps wanting “civilized” behavior could opt-into (at least for long enough that enough badly behaved apps would be updated to warrant moving that to the default.)

The data for locales like French tends to have been very stable for decades.  Changes to data for major locales like that are more disruptive than to newer emerging markets where the data is undergoing more churn.

-Shawn

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://unicode.org/pipermail/unicode/attachments/20190119/71a96ecd/attachment.html>