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

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <kdh5nh$pte$1 at dont-email.me>,
	Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:
> 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.
>>
> 
> Only an American could have made that comment. :-)

How about an American who has spent a considerable amount of his
life living outside the US? :-)

> 
> FYI, approximately 95% of the world's population lives outside of the
> US border (with their own conventions) and there are well established
> ways for handling this.

You mean presentation, don't you?

> 
> 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.

Hmmmm...  Linux (which is what we were talking about) stores time as 
seconds since the epoch.  All displays are at the application level.
Timezone (which controls the display) is a file well outside the 
kernel (and thus the OS).  I can change the timezone and display of
time without making any change to the OS, re-compilling or even re-
booting.   I know for a fact that I can set my Currency Symbol in a
wordprocessor or spreadsheet program to be different than other users
of the same machine.

> 
> These settings, while they can be changed at application level in some
> applications, most certainly are not application specific.

I know of no kernel structure in Linux or any version of Unix I have ever
worked with that contained "Currency Symbol".  That has always been an
application setting. (Even COBOL let you set that yourself in the source
to your programs.)

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>