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

[Simon Clubley]

On 2013-01-21, Bill Gunshannon <billg999 at cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
> In article <kdh5nh$pte$1 at dont-email.me>,
> 	Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:
>> 
>> 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? :-)
>

With your later comments, I cannot tell any longer if you don't know
about these routines or just don't consider them a part of the OS.

>
>> 
>> 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.)
>

So you don't consider the C RTL and environment variables to be part of
the OS ?

So something is not a part of the OS unless it needs a kernel structure
to support it ?

That's so out of touch with reality, I don't really know how to respond. :-)

In my world, I consider a application specific package to be, for example,
a word processor, a email client or a game. I do not consider it to be
the base OS supplied support routines used to implement those applications.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world