de_DE has been using the wrong group separator for over 18 years

Florian Weimer fweimer@redhat.com
Wed Apr 18 09:35:00 GMT 2018


On 04/18/2018 10:30 AM, kdex wrote:

> While the Federal Ministry of Finance may be an interesting (or even ironic)
> source to point out, it is in no way normative, and their website is mostly
> subject to their team of web developers.

»Rund 32.000 Experten aus Wirtschaft und Forschung, von Verbraucherseite 
und der öffentlichen Hand bringen ihr Fachwissen in den Normungsprozess 
ein, den DIN als privatwirtschaftlich organisierter Projektmanager steuert.«

<https://www.din.de/de/ueber-normen-und-standards/basiswissen>

And as that web page explains, DIN norms aren't normative, either.  Our 
users expect that the locales follow actual practice, not what some 
document says that they have never seen and nobody has read.  (For 
example, I can't easily tell whether the DIN-proposed keyboard layout 
for German provides a convenient way to enter the relevant space character.)

Wikipedia itself prefers ».« for numbers on (culturally) German pages:

<https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Schreibweise_von_Zahlen#Zifferngruppierung>

You cited a Swiss web page (finanzen.ch), but the Swiss have slightly 
different typographical traditions which do not apply to de_DE.

As I said, some (culturally German) typesetters use spaces (of various 
widths), but their use is somewhat rare.

Thanks,
Florian



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