Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: locales
Message-ID: <5501@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 9-Jan-87 13:36:29 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.5501
Posted: Fri Jan  9 13:36:29 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Jan-87 21:51:59 EST
References: <3231@cbosgd.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) )
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 13
Xref: mnetor comp.lang.c:660 comp.std.internat:68

The concept of locale in itself doesn't solve character set problems
such as Spanish ch, German ss, or Asian (16-bit) codes.  However, it
does provide the necessary hook to write applications that operate
either in an environment-independent manner (as system software
generally should) or in a locally-customized environment (as human
interface software normally should).

There is a string-to-string mapping strxfrm (formerly strcoll) for
the purpose of turning a "natural native" character string into
something amenable to collation.  This mechanism doesn't solve the
general multi-byte character problem; a presentation of the issues
involved there (and hopefully a solution) are planned for the next
X3J11 meeting.