GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 632182
Use space for thousands separator if locale does not define it
Last modified: 2010-10-20 09:29:57 UTC
Some locales (e.g. es_ES.UTF-8) do not have a thousands separator - in this case the preference should not be there as it is confusing. Noticed here: https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gcalctool/+bug/631665
As researched by Jean-Baptiste Lallement in the LP bug: That works only for languages which have the property "thousands_sep" defined in LC_NUMERIC and the point that Ara and Sergio are raising is fair. The Unix locales is not the _truth_ and the user should be able to set a grouping separator if he wants to even if none is defined in the Unix locale. What does the standardization organization says: "Therefore the space is recommended in the SI/ISO 31-0 standard,[8] and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures states that "for numbers with many digits the digits may be divided into groups of three by a thin space, in order to facilitate reading." (summary from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark#Digit_grouping feel free to read the full iso documentation if you have problem sleeping) Moreover, the Unicode consortium (http://cldr.unicode.org/) defines in its Unicode Common Locale Data Repository a grouping separator for es_ES - '.' - and pt_PT - 'space'. So, I think that a full fix for this, without using another repository than the Unix locale, would be to use the value for the grouping separator as defined in LC_NUMERIC and if none or empty then fallback to 'space' which is internationally recognized. What do you think ?
Sounds good to me! I've updated the bug title to reflect this.
Fixed in unstable.