The evolving Story of Locale Support, part 5 (...until the decision was made to not refuse to add it)

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2011/11/08 07:01 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2011/11/08/10234995.aspx

So after going way off-topic in the last part, I thought I'd come back to the reservation.

This is a very interesting list, for several reasons, one of which is the wide differences in reasons each one was added.

In particular, there are several here that I am quite pleased about, all of which I recused myself most of the justification conversations because I was personally rooting for them and didn't want an inappropriate bias to take away from my advocacy...

Now these aren't UI languages mind you -- these are just locales -- though as I pointed out earlier, locales are huge. It takes your breath away the first time you see your locale on the Standards and Formats list -- I know because I've witnessed it several times over the years (more on this another time).

So they are cool on their on, and I'll give part of the list of why I think a few of them are especially cool:

There is Central Kurdish (Arabic) - Iraq, which allowed me to be proven wrong about my earlier statements almost 2.5 years ago in The Whey doesn't get a locale, either.

And there is Tamil - Sri Lanka, which allows me to be a part of keeping ~1/3 of my promises about Tamil locales in Windows.

And there is Hawaiian (United States), which I despondently assumed would never be added, for no reason I could fathom, until the decision was made to not refuse to add it....

For the record, I'll say that Shawn Steele's advocacy of Hawaiian was a definite factor in its approval -- at the point where we asked about it, we were past the point of expecting to succeeed; we were like the Chicago Cubs (assuming we already lost), which made the approval all the more sweet!

There is more here that is interesting and fun, which I'll be covering in future parts of the series....

Just installed Windows 8 consumer preview and was glad to see the Sindhi (Arabic) locale. But also shocked to see that it didn't contain Sindhi keyboard layout. How good is a locale without a keyboard? And more funny that it doesn't show the already installed (I upgraded from win7) personal Sindhi keyboard in the list of keyboards for Arabic script. I can't even choose the existing keyboard.

I will request to kindly fix this and include the Sindhi keyboard layout designed by Majid Bhurgri in the Release version of Win8.

Thanks for the locale at least.

2012/10/26 The evolving Story of Locale Support, part 28: We finally fixed that 'Install New Languages' thing!

2012/10/02 The evolving Story of Locale Support, part 27: No, the T and the H aren't silent...

2012/09/20 Those keys that are so hot -- which ones should they be?

2012/08/20 The evolving Story of Locale Support, part 26: Hey Windows 8, there's someone on the phone for you.

2012/07/11 The evolving Story of Locale Support, part 25: Something old, something new, something repurposed, and something...

2012/06/07 The evolving Story of Locale Support, part 24: I Adar you! Hell, I Double Adar you! (Windows 8 ed.)

2012/06/05 The evolving Story of Locale Support, part 23: Tamazight? Outta sight!

2012/04/12 The evolving Story of Locale Support, part 22: Digit Substitution 2.0

2012/03/08 The evolving Story of Locale Support, part 21: The Windows 8 Hijripalooza extraordinaire!

2012/03/02 The evolving Story of Locale Support, part 20: Yes, it's Bangla. Not Bengali!