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It's useful to remember that the 1980s approach to localization preceded the global Internet. The way most software worked was that you bought it from a local
by pavlov 3y ago
It's useful to remember that the 1980s approach to localization preceded the global Internet.
The way most software worked was that you bought it from a local reseller. It came localized for your country (perhaps by the reseller or importer rather than the original authors of the software), and then you'd use it to conduct your local business. Data interchange wasn't that common.
Desktop printers were hugely important because a hard copy was how you'd share anything. If you needed to get the information somewhere fast, you'd then fax it.
Rarely when you did need to exchange files, you'd use floppies. Maybe you'd take your WordPerfect document to a professional print shop so they would do a layout using cutting-edge desktop publishing technology.
So the notion that somebody in Germany might receive American files, or vice versa, wasn't really a primary concern. It was considered far more important that the Germans, and everybody else, would be able to work with their data with the number formatting that was preferred (and sometimes legally mandated).
- orf 3y agoCool but that was over 40 years ago. Who cares, and why hasn’t it been improved since then?
- IshKebab 3y agoI guess anyone that develops in C is happy living in the 80s amongst the footguns. Anyone who isn't has moved on to other languages where it has been improved.
- pvh 3y agoTo the former, curious people with an interest in how and why the world came to be as it is. To the latter, obviously "it" has improved, but ecosystem effects make certain changes very difficult and expensive to coordinate and what we see here is the scars from that process. Everything you see in the world grew out of things that came before, and was made by fallible people working with limited time, energy, and perspective. Honestly, I'm a bit surprised someone with a three letter handle wouldn't already recognize this. Surely you have been around here for a while.
- JdeBP 3y agoIt actually has been improved. See discssion of isspace_l() elsewhere on this page.
- nwellnhof 3y agoUnfortunately, not all locale-dependent functions have an *_l version, at least on some platforms. glibc doesn't have sprintf_l, for example, unlike BSD and MSVCRT.
- JdeBP 3y agoLuckily, sprintf() is irrelevant to the headlined case, that involves isspace_l(), which is in the BSD, GNU, and even musl C libraries.