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

[kdex <kdex at kdex dot de>]

On Wednesday, April 18, 2018 11:35:31 AM CEST Florian Weimer wrote:
> 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.)
By the same argument, you could easily pitch abandoning all norms; most people 
will likely not have seen or read any norm in their lives; the majority just 
replicates what others do, or whatever Duden states.

So yes, it is true that it there is no requirement to follow DIN norms, nor is 
there a requirement to follow Duden's word spellings; though I don't see how a 
seemingly arbitrary group separator with no normative grounds is any better. 
The purpose of a norm is to have a common system that everyone can follow. 
Doesn't deviating from the norm defy the very purpose of having norms in the 
first place?

I would be surprised if *everyone* using the es_MX locale would expect U+2009 
to be used as a group separator; in fact, I do imagine a lot of users being 
just as creative as the Germans when it comes to typing out grouping 
separators by hand.

Hence, the point is less that locale users need the ability to have U+2009 
mapped on their keyboards somewhere, but rather that users should be able to 
input regular numbers and rely on their software to use their system locale to 
figure out how their numbers should be displayed according to the current 
locale.
> 
> Wikipedia itself prefers ».« for numbers on (culturally) German pages:
> 
> <https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Schreibweise_von_Zahlen#Zifferngrup
> pierung>
> 
> You cited a Swiss web page (finanzen.ch), but the Swiss have slightly
> different typographical traditions which do not apply to de_DE.
I think it's best if we consider most URLs exchanged in this thread to be 
anecdotal evidence; this doesn't get us much further (but I do acknowledge 
your point).

Ideally, we should adhere to "official" guidelines. And as has been stated 
before; Duden is de-jure non-normative, but de-facto, it very much is.
> 
> As I said, some (culturally German) typesetters use spaces (of various
> widths), but their use is somewhat rare.
> 
> Thanks,
> Florian

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