[Info-vax] [OT] Linux vs Windows vs OS X. Was Re: Unix on A DEC Vax?

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2013-01-20 16:24:17 +0000, Simon Clubley said:

> On 2013-01-20, Bill Gunshannon <billg999 at cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
>> In article <nospam-3395ED.21543919012013 at news.chingola.ch>,
>> 	Paul Sture <nospam at sture.ch> writes:
>>> and particularly when I wanted a non-US date
>>> format (which seems strange when you consider that Canonical is a UK
>>> company).
>> 
>> I can't believe that is that difficult.  Date format where?  Wouldn't that
>> be application specific rather than something the OS does?  Date in the
>> OS is always ticks since the epoch.
>> 
> ...
> The country specific attributes (currency symbols, date format, etc) are
> set at operating system level and the application is expected to acquire
> those values from the machine it is running on.
> 
> These settings, while they can be changed at application level in some
> applications, most certainly are not application specific.

In OpenVMS, the "OS" layer closest to what Simon is referencing is 
implemented in the internationalization add-on package 
<http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/83final/5763/5763pro_019.html>, and — 
given the I18N kit is packaged as an add-on kit and not an integrated 
feature — its usage among OpenVMS applications probably isn't as 
frequent or as large as might otherwise be desirable.  I18N includes 
iconv, locale(), et al.  There is a port of the GNU gettext() API 
around, too.

Though with very different APIs than are used in other C software, the 
SYS$LANGUAGE and LIB$DT_FORMAT mechanisms are roughly equivalent and 
are integrated within the base OS. 
<http://www.openvms.compaq.com/doc/73final/5841/5841pro_074.html>.   
The Terminal Fallback Facility (TFF) and the National (Replacement) 
Character Set (NCS) RTL and a few other pieces are also present.

VMS wasn't designed or shipped with any of this stuff in mind, so 
there's a whole lot of application and system code around that doesn't 
handle internationalization (or doesn't handle it very well), much less 
contend well with strings using "newer" character encodings such as 
UTF-8.  VMS did recently acquire UTF-8 filename support, but I don't 
recall particular changes in the area of TFF, NCS or I18N.


-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC