From PRECAL@rulmvs.LeidenUniv.NL Wed May 3 18:32:00 1995 Received: from rulsur.LeidenUniv.nl by dkuug.dk with SMTP id AA11271 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4j for ); Wed, 3 May 1995 17:29:09 +0200 Received: from RULMVS.LeidenUniv.nl (MAILER@HLERUL2) by rulsur.LeidenUniv.NL (PMDF V4.3-10 #2497) id <01HQ2OXW1W5S0006E3@rulsur.LeidenUniv.NL>; Wed, 03 May 1995 17:28:50 +0100 (MET) Date: Wed, 03 May 1995 17:32 +0100 (CET) From: Johan van Wingen Subject: NL locale To: i18n@dkuug.dk Message-Id: <"95-05-03-17:32:01.49*PRECAL"@RULMVS.LEIDENUNIV.NL> X-Envelope-To: i18n@DKUUG.DK Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 A POSIX Locale for the Netherlands The system POSIX, related to UNIX, has specified so-called "locales" (ISO/IEC 9945-2) to enable users to supply national or cultural conventions where otherwise only English would be used. Some examples are given in the standard, to guide national bodies how to fill what they considered suitable. A New Work Item Proposal to produce a Guide how to do it has been submitted for voting in SC22. Notwithstanding this, The Netherlands NB became aware of a potential problem, and the national SC22 (NNI 381 02) decided that a NL-locale should be developed. Because of the work involved, a project proposal was formulated, and submitted to NNI and the Netherlands Government to get a budget. This is now under study, and the resulting NL-locale is not expected within a few months. The decision was influenced by some rumours that a locale for NL was already circulating. When we got a copy at last we discovered that the contents had been produced by a Danish firm with which we had never been in contact. It goes beyond saying that this caused considerable irritation, in particular because several details are in direct conflict with national regulations in our country. The worst case is that of the character set. In the official Handbook on personal information processing, Part 5, it is stated (Chapter 20): ........ This chapter contains recommendations for present and future use of coded character sets in the public sector in the Netherlands. Point of departure are the recommendations such as are included in the NEN standards 1888 and 5825, with respect to interchange of personal data and addresses. This recommendation has been made mandatory per 1 January 1993 for the civil service and is being adhered to on a voluntary basis by other spheres of the public administration and by the sectors Social Security, Health Care and the Police. The recommendation reads that if the hardware/software is supporting an ISO coding system, that is, one in accordance with the ISO 2022 structure, it shall use, fitting to the functional needs, characters coded in conformance with one of the following standards: for the basic set: NEN-ISO/IEC 646 for Latin-5: ISO 8859-9 for Teletex: ISO/IEC 6937 The "made in Denmark" NL-locale specifies Latin-1 (8859-1). Implementers of locales are warned that use of this Danish version could make their software unsuitable to government procurement. Should they suffer loss of business as a result of having based their product on an unofficial locale, a claim for damages to that Danish firm is perfectly justified. Best regards from J. W. van Wingen PRECAL@HLERUL2.BITNET or PRECAL@rulmvs.LeidenUniv.nl