Software Internationalization Guide

The HP Internationalization Subsystem

Software Internationalization Guide—526225-002

4-17

Testing the Application’s Use of Locales

You can switch locale environment variables to verify that an application's behavior is

consistent with the selected locale and that it accesses the appropriate message

catalog. Test all supported locales to verify that the locale-sensitive aspects of the

application are locale-independent, and that the proper set of internationalized

functions has been used in development. Test each of the six locale categories—

LC_CTYPE, LC_COLLATE, LC_MONETARY, LC_NUMERIC, LC_TIME, and

LC_MESSAGES.

The following example shows the results of a test of the monetary format of an

application. The application generates the value five thousand point five; if no locale-

sensitive data is hard-coded, the output results in these monetary formats for the

C/POSIX, US, and French locales:

The currency symbol for the US locale is $ and the monetary decimal point is .. When

the locale is changed to the French locale, the currency symbol changes to F and the

monetary decimal point to ,. Note that this example shows only the formatting of a

numeric value—it does not convert between currencies.

Troubleshooting Internationalized

Applications

The key to troubleshooting problems in an internationalized application is determining

whether the problem is in the user's environment setting or in the application itself. This

section offers tips to help in troubleshooting an internationalized application.

Problems With the User's Environment

Users are responsible for providing the correct data in their environments. When

troubleshooting problems in an internationalized application, ensure that the user's

locale setting for processing data is consistent with the locale in which it was created.

For example, if a user changes the locale from French to Spanish while using data that

was created with the French locale, the application processes the data according to the

rules for the Spanish locale. An internationalized application handles the data as a bit

stream and encodes the data according to the current locale setting.

Identifying Problems in the Application

Determining whether the problem is in the application code itself or in its

internationalization aspects begins with an understanding of how the components of an

Locale Output

C/POSIX 5000.50

US $5,000.50

French 5000,50F