hindi based number format (was: Re: Introducing myself)

[Frank H. Ellenberger]

Am Freitag, 4. Januar 2008 17:38:07 schrieb Andrew Sackville-West:
> On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 08:01:01AM +0100, Frank H. Ellenberger wrote:
> > Am Donnerstag, 3. Januar 2008 23:15:39 schrieb mark carter:
> > > mark carter wrote:
> > >
> > >   Bug 501497 – Values in Gnucash reports are hard to import in
:
> > Gnucash seems to know them, while other programs are more atlanto-centric
> > and only knows about thousand, million ...

Oops, here I went wrong, it seems to be the other way. You can start 
LANG=hi_IN.utf8 gnucash
(at your luck most strings are dirty/untranslated) and it shows atlantic 
10,000,000 instead of hindi based asian 1,00,00,000. AFAIK locale supports 
only every three digit commas, but I am not shure. 

> > He wants simply an option to export without commas.
>
> I think this is not necessarily an export issue as much as it is a
> locale specific representation problem. Are we properly representing
> those numbers in gnucash? 

I assume, we use some number formating, which is based on the locale settings. 
If locale does not support lakh and crore, the prima causa should be solved 
there.

> And, if we are, then probably the simplest 
> solution is to implement either a per-report option or an application
> preference controlling the *display* of commas in reports which will
> then directly affect the export output.

I think, for humans also a big number with wrong commas is better readable 
than whithout commas, while computer programs are totaly confused by wrong 
commas. It seems to me, the most user friendly solution would be show 
formated numbers on display and export unformated numbers to files. 
The second choice, I assume, would be a checkbox under 
Edit->Preferences->General->Numbers:Show Numbers unformated.

>
> A

Namaste
Frank