ICU Locale Explorer > Help

This file contains the help text for Locale Explorer, organized by topic. If your question is not covered here, you can post your question on the icu-support mailing list - http://www.icu-project.org/contacts.html). Please post any comments or suggestions for improvement of this help file on the ICU bug database.

Display Problems

The output of this dynamic page is dependent on your browser settings, installed fonts, and which encoding you choose. If text displays incorrectly, you may need to change the encoding at the bottom of each Locale Explorer page.

Display Q&A


(missing resource) - MISSING_RESOURCE_ERROR

The resource you asked for did not exist, nor could a suitable default be found.


AM & PM

Used in formatting/parsing Times. Specify the strings to be used for 'am' vs. 'pm'. Ignored if am/pm are not used in that locale.


Collation rules

Specifies the rules to be used for collating (comparing and sorting) text. The rules may be found in the ICU documentation for TableCollator.


Regions

Specifies the display name for the given region (ISO-3166) codes. Used for converting a region code of a locale into a displayable name.


Currency Elements

These strings are used in parsing/formatting numbers which are designated as currency values.

Currency Symbol
This is used whenever a 'currency symbol' (\u00A4) is encountered in a currency number pattern.
Int'l Currency Symbol
Three-letter international code for a currency. Used where a doubled currency symbol (\u00A4 \u00A4) is encountered in a number pattern.
Currency separator
This is used as the decimal separator in currency formatting/parsing, instead of the DecimalSeparator from the NumberElements list.

Date & Time Options

First day of the week
A number indicating which day of the week is considered the 'first' day, for calendar purposes. It is 1-based, with 1 being Sunday, 2 being Monday, .. 7 being Saturday.
Minimal Days in First Week
Minimal days required in the first week of the year are; For example, if the first week is defined as one that contains the first day of the first month of a year, this value will be 1. If it must be a full week, the value will be 7.

Date & Time Patterns

The first 8 items are different lengths of either date or time patterns. See the localPatternChars (in the locale) for the meanings of special characters.

Quoting rules: Single quotes, ('), enclose bits of the pattern that should be treated literally. Inside a quoted string, two single quotes ('') are replaced with a single one ('). For example: 'class of 'YYYY' at 'h' o''clock' -> class of 1939 at 6 o'clock (Literal strings underlined.)


Day

This resource contains the full and short (abbreviated) names of the days of the week, starting with Sunday.


Eras

Display strings for the eras. (2 for the default, Gregorian calendar: BC,AD.)


Languages

Display names for language codes. For example, "en" is "English" in English, but it is "inglés" in Spanish.


Windows Locale ID

Hexadecimal Locale ID for this Locale as used by Microsoft Windows. See http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/ for a description of these ID's.


Month

Full and short (abbreviated) month names, starting with January.


Number Elements

Symbols used in number formatting and parsing. Used in NumberPatterns.

Decimal Separator
- separates the integer and fractional part of the number.
Grouping Separator
- groups (for example) units of thousands: 10^6 = 1,000,000. The grouping separator is commonly used for thousands, but in some countries for ten-thousands. The interval is a constant number of digits between the grouping characters, such as 100,000,000 or 1,0000,0000. If you supply a pattern with multiple grouping characters, the interval between the last one and the end of the integer is the one that is used. So "#,##,###,####" == "######,####" == "##,####,####".
Pattern Separator
- sets the character used for separating variant expressions. (For example: 0.00;(0.00) where the second pattern is the form to use for negative number)
Percent
- symbol used to indicate a percentage (1/100th) amount. (If present, the value is also multiplied by 100 before formatting. That way 1.23 => 123%)
ZeroDigit
- Symbol used to indicate a digit in the pattern, or zero if that place would otherwise be empty. For example, with the digit of '0', the pattern "000" would format "34" as "034", but the pattern "0" would format "34" as just "34". As well, the digits 1-9 are expected to follow the code point of this specified 0 value.
Digit
- Symbol used to indicate any digit value. If that digit is zero, then it is not shown.
Minus Sign
- Symbol used to denote negative value.
Exponential
- Symbol separating the mantissa and exponent values.
PerMill
- symbol used to indicate a per-mille (1/1000th) amount. (If present, the value is also multiplied by 1000 before formatting. That way 1.23 => 1230 [1/000])
Infinity
- The infinity sign. Corresponds to the IEEE infinity bit pattern.
Not a number
- The NaN sign. Corresponds to the IEEE NaN bit pattern.

Number Patterns

Patterns for formatting different types of numbers. Note that the NumberElements resource affects how these patterns are interpreted.

Decimal
The normal locale specific way to write a base 10 number.
Currency
Use \u00A4 where the local currency symbol should be. Doubling the currency symbol (\u00A4\u00A4) will output the international currency symbol (a 3-letter code).
Percent
Pattern for use with percentage formatting
Scientific
Pattern for use with scientific (exponent) formatting.

Quoting rules: Single quotes, ('), enclose bits of the pattern that should be treated literally. Inside a quoted string, two single quotes ('') are replaced with a single one ('). For example: 'X '#' at 'h' o''clock' -> class of 1939 at 6 o'clock (Literal strings underlined.)


Locale Codes

2 and 3 letter ISO codes for the language and region, as well as the variant codes.


Version

Version of the ICU data files.


Localized Date Pattern Chars

These characters are replaced with the appropriate values when a date or time is being formatted.

Characters may be used multiple times. For example, if y is used for the year, 'yy' might produce '99', whereas 'yyyy' produces '1999'.

For most numerical characters, the number of characters specifies the field width. For example, if h is the hour, 'h' might produce '5', but 'hh' produces '05'. For some characters, the count specifies whether an abbreviated or full form should be used.

Note: In the following list, the default (English) form is used as an example, but see the actual locale for the correct characters!


Time Zones

Localized names for time zones. The columns are, in order:


Collation (sorting) Example

This example demonstrates sorting (collation) in this locale. Type in some lines of text to be sorted, and click the Sort button. (The notes below explain what happens). You see four different columns as output. The first is the original text for comparison. The lines are numbered to show their original position. The remaining columns show sorting by different strengths (available as a parameter to the collation function). Groups of lines that sort precisely the same are separated by an underline. Since collation treats these lines as identical, lines in the same group could appear in any order (depending on the precise sorting algorithm used).

The demo shows three different strengths used when comparing any two strings:

Primary - Tertiary is the only collation people will normally use; however, these levels are also used in searching, for a "loose" match. In some languages, such as French, secondary differences are counted from the end of the strings. You see this if you look at the difference in sorting between English and French for the lines: "côté", "coté", "côte", and "cote".
 
Note: if you want to enter a character for sorting that is not available from your keyboard, you can type it in by character code using "\u" notation: for example, "ä" is \u00E4, or paste it in from a unicode chart page, such as here [link http://www.macchiato.com/unicode/charts.html].
 
References. For more information, please see these web pages.

Number Pattern Demo

In this example you can try creating localized patterns and formatting numbers using those patterns.

The top form shows the pattern you are working with. It is the same kind of pattern as the pre-set patterns found in the NumberPatterns resource. Also, see the NumberElements resource for important information on the characters used in each pattern.

The left hand side shows the number that will be formatted. You may change this number (and click Change) to see it's effect on the formatted number.

The right hand side shows the formatted number. You may also change the formatted version of the number (and click Change) to see it converted back onto the left hand side.

Note that you may type in unicode values directly. For example, typing '\u0416' will be replaced with the Cyrillic letter "Zhe", which is at Unicode code point U+0416.


Date & Time Pattern Demo

In this example you can try creating localized patterns and formatting dates using those patterns.

The top form shows the pattern you are working with. It is the same kind of pattern as the pre-set patterns found in the DateTimePatterns resource. The characters used in the pattern are the localized pattern characters for that locale. They are reprinted at the bottom of the demo for your convenience.

Below the pattern is the current date/time (at left), and the formatted version using your pattern (at right).

Note that you may type in unicode values directly. For example, typing '\u0416' will be replaced with the Cyrillic letter "Zhe", which is at Unicode code point U+0416.


Transliteration Help

Clicking 'Transliterate it for me!' will cause any text that is NOT "Latin-1" to be transliterated. All transliteration will show up in green. To remove transliteration, simply change your encoding to something else. What is Transliteration? Click here to learn more!


End of help
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