Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!munnari.oz.au!cs.mu.oz.au!ok From: ok@cs.mu.oz.au (Richard O'Keefe) Newsgroups: comp.text Subject: Re: TeXhax Digest V89 #101 Message-ID: <2663@munnari.oz.au> Date: 9 Nov 89 09:54:12 GMT References: <807@shelby.Stanford.EDU> Sender: news@cs.mu.oz.au Lines: 24 In article <807@shelby.Stanford.EDU>, Tor Lillqvist wrote: > Another matter that might need some standardization is the allocation > of language numbers. I suggest that a range of the numbers (half of > them?) is allocated to fixed languages, and that the rest are > site-specific. I hereby claim number 1 for Swedish (my native > language), and number 2 for Finnish :-) :-) I really hate to do this. It really hurts me to recommend anything from the PC world. But just because it's in OS/2 doesn't mean it's bad... OS/2 National Language Support already has a set of "country codes" assigned. Now countries aren't languages -- Switzerland is one country with four languages, English is one language with many countries -- but it's a good place to start, and most internationalisation is going to be country-based rather than language-based anyway (currency symbols and date styles vary in countries with the same language). Instead of inventing yet another scheme, why not use the same numbers that OS/2 does? And when I tell you that 044 = the United Kingdom 046 = Sweden 358 = Finland perhaps you will see where OS/2 gets its numbers...