126168 - create localization that uses SI standards

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Internationalization: Localization, enhancement)

Description

[Mikel Ward]

This is to implement the suggestion made in bug 65710, comment 16 to create a
locale that uses SI standard representation for data sizes (see original bug for
discussion and URL for standard).

I want the original bug to reflect that this is an international standard, and
should be standard (possibly even hard-coded) behavior.  This bug is a way to
show how it should look and get something useable until (if ever) this point is
agreed upon.

I'll start by making a locale based on en-US, replacing the strings that are
customizable (such as KB->KiB).

Comment 1

[Mikel Ward]

Other standards are currently being ignored (bug 126173).  Broadening scope of
this bug to include all appropriate SI symbols.

According to bug 40877, it should be possible to replace the "sec" string.

Comment 2

[Andrew Hagen]

Confirming bug. This will not change anything in the default installation of
Mozilla, but will give users the ability to use SI units if desired. Resetting
platform from PC to All.

Comment 3

[rchen]

Michael, do you mind owning the bug? and drive the effort?

Comment 4

[Mikel Ward]

I'm happy to do this one.

Comment 5

[Troodon]

What's the current state of this effort?

Comment 6

[Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley]

Is this dead?

Comment 7

[Mikel Ward]

Yes.  Nobody's working on this as far as I know.

Comment 8

[Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley]

I might do this then for SeaMonkey & Firefox (if I can work out where kB means
kB and where it doesn't). It does seem crazy that we have to create a
localisation for conforming to the world's oldest and most ubiqitous
international standard in what is supposed to be the most standards-compliant
browser.

Comment 9

[Per Johansson]

I'm interested too. How can we demand that ISO and IEC's web sites respect HTML
standards if we don't respect ISO and IEC standards?

The new binary prefixes are defined in "IEC 60027-2 (2000-11) Ed. 2.0 Letter
symbols to be used in electrical technology - Part 2: Telecommunications and
electronics". It's expensive to buy, but it's widely quoted.

Comment 10

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Filter on "Nobody_NScomTLD_20080620"

Comment 11

[Gordon P. Hemsley [:GPHemsley]]

This seems a bit ridiculous. We already have various localizations for the varieties of English used around the world. It seems silly to create a whole new localization just for a few characters (or else argue about which English [or other language] this single localization would use).

It makes more sense, IMO, to simply implement a browser preference for using binary or decimal prefixes. (IIRC, this is often done at the OS-level nowadays.)

That's assuming there's even still interest in such a thing. I actually recommend that this be resolved as WONTFIX.

Comment 12

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

I agree with WONTFIX. The SI standards don't differ in any meaningful way to every-day life. And most people don't really know what a MB is, let alone a MiB. Thus, the end-user value of this would be nil.

If anybody really felt like doing this, that'd be a community-maintained language pack.