[whatwg] Client side value for language preference

[Jukka K. Korpela]

2012-03-30 17:22, Henri Sivonen wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 5:08 PM, Matthew Nuzum<newz at bearfruit.org>  wrote:
>> For example, maybe a site can't afford translation but a small library
>> could be included that formats dates and numbers based on a user's
>> language preference. No more wondering if 2/3/12 is in March or in
>> February.
>
> The reader doesn't know that the site tries to be smart about dates
> (but not smart enough to just use ISO dates),

It’s not smart to use ISO dates, which are not what the majority of 
mankind is used to. Sometimes ISO dates are the least if evils, but they 
are not proper localization.

> so scrambling the order
> of date components not to match the convention of the language of the
> page is probably worse than using the convention that's congruent with
> the language of the page.

But what might that be, and how does it relate to the formats that 
<input type=date> and relatives are supposed to deal with?

There is absolutely no way in HTML, in HTML 4 or in HTML5, to say that 
input of dates should be accepted according to a specific convention. 
What users get is an US convention, or a local convention as per the 
browser, quite independently of the (declared or implied) locale of the 
page.

Yucca