[Python-Dev] Re: proposal: add basic time type to the standard library

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "TP" == Tim Peters <tim@zope.com> writes:

    TP> [Guido]
    >> ...  Another thing to consider is that for most apps, the
    >> choice of the date/time format should be taken out of the hands
    >> of the programmer and placed into the hands of the user,
    >> through some kind of preference setting.  I18n and L10n also
    >> strongly suggests to take this route.

    TP> I'm sure nobody wants to admit this <wink>, but in sheer
    TP> numbers, nobody has more experience with this stuff than
    TP> Microsoft.  If you sit at your Windows box and go to Start ->
    TP> Settings -> Control Panel -> Regional Settings, you'll get a
    TP> tabbed dialog for specifying the format of number, currency,
    TP> time, and date displays.  A Windows app that ignores the
    TP> settings here is considered to be broken (and rightly so).

    TP> Idiosyncratic formats for user-visible
    TP> number/currency/date/time info is going to become an
    TP> increasingly Bad Idea on other OSes too.

I've not been following this thread at all, so apologies if this has
been brought up already.

The localization context should not (always) be taken from the user
environment.  In systems like web-based services, the context will
instead be relative to the person/entity making the remote request, so
we have to be able to explicitly specify the localization context, or
at least query, modify, and restore some global context.

-Barry