[whatwg] Re: internationalization/localization

[Malcolm Rowe]

Martin Kutschker writes:
> Well, now what? I see the problem. Do I understand it correctly that we
> simply say getting locale and time zone is outside the spec, so browser
> developers must deal with it.

WF2 requires ECMAScript, unless you're building a non-scripting UA, and 
ECMAScript requires that you can identify the locale and timezone that the 
user is in (for Date.toLocaleString()), so this generally won't be a 
problem. 

[Note that I'm not saying anything about Jim's other points: that the user's 
locale and timezone might be incorrect, or that using a UTC time means that 
the a non-WF2 user must manually convert to UTC time.] 

>> I agree knowing the scope of the size of the control is useful, but
>> names of months are also great for display, everyone can deal with
>> those who speaks the language of the page.
> Sure. Anyway web/gtraphics designers loath everything they cannot
> control. If it cannot be controlled at least to some degree it simply
> won't be used. 
> 
> So I vote for either some kind of pattern (eg format="d.m.y") or some
> style type (eg format="compact" => "1.12.2003" or format="long" =>
> Mittwoch, der 30. Juni 2004", or some other types).

An explicit pattern is bad for i18n, obviously, but 'short' and 'long' (or 
whatever) formats would certainly make sense. However, this is now 
definitely presentational, and so it should be a CSS property, not an HTML 
attribute. 

Regards,
Malcolm