[whatwg] Decimal comma in numeric input

[Ian Hickson]

On Sat, 16 Jul 2011, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> 16.07.2011 00:01, Ian Hickson wrote:
> 
> > Much discussion on this topic happened when we started on this work in 
> > 2004 and 2005, I highly recommend perusing the archives around that 
> > time.
> 
> Authors and implementors will need to be able to understand the topic 
> without checking discussions archives, so the specs should say at least 
> a little about the issue that the rules for user’s input may be quite 
> different from the rules for the as stored and forwared. And users will 
> be confused anyway, when user interfaces work oddly.

Ok, done.


> > On Thu, 14 Apr 2011, John Tamplin wrote:
> > > 
> > > The entire web application, which includes both client and 
> > > server-side code, must have the same idea about what locale the user 
> > > is using.  If the app provides a drop-down box or preference setting 
> > > to choose a different locale, as most localized apps do, the web 
> > > browser has to be using the same locale for any native locale 
> > > processing it uses. Otherwise, you run a serious risk of having 
> > > incorrect data -- if a user types "10,000" in a field when they 
> > > think they are using a locale with a comma as the decimal separator, 
> > > does the app receive that as 10000 or 10.000?  If the app is running 
> > > in en-US because the user requested it or their system locale isn't 
> > > supported by the app, and the browser sends "10.000" as the value 
> > > because the system locale is "de", then that is a problem.
> > 
> > Indeed. To solve this, we need help from CSS. That's one of the 
> > reasons we created<output> in HTML.
> 
> This is about data representation and localization, not about optional 
> stylistic suggestions, so CSS is a wrong way to deal with the issue.

I disagree. It's entirely a presentational issue. It's almost the 
_definition_ of a presentational issue.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'