From: Prof.Dr. M.D.Lechner <lechner@uni-osnabrueck.de>
  To  : jphilo@mailway.com, rasmb@bbri.org, rasmb@alpha.bbri.org
  Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 16:59:37 +0200

Re: regional settings with DCDT+ or SVEDBERG

We have one very strict rule:
"Never use the comma (,) as decimal symbol, because many problems
arise if one uses this crazy sign for numbers."

It would be possible in the windows 95/98/NT/00 operating system
to choose french or german regional settings and simultaneously the point (.)
as decimal symbol (My Computer -> Control Panel -> Regional Settings ->
Number -> Decimal symbol). According to my experience and those of many
other german scientists you have then no problems with most national and
international programs and data files.

Until the beginning of the 90th scientists and engineers in germany have used
only numbers with the point as decimal symbol with respect to computer
calculations. It is one of the great revenges of Microsoft against french and
german people to introduce in his operating system "windows" the comma as
decimal symbol for french and german people. With this incredible introduction
of the comma it would nearly be impossible to exchange data files with numbers
between english speaking people and french and german people respectively.

Is there anybody who stops Microsoft with his comma as decimal symbol?

I hope that this would be a contribution to the question of John Philo.

M.D.Lechner, University of Osnabrueck, Germany
Mail: lechner@uni-osnabrueck.de

John Philo schrieb:

> A new user is reporting program crashes when attempting to use French
> regional preferences for number formatting (',' as the decimal indicator
> etc.)
>
> I had thought these issues were resolved some time ago, and I have not been
> able to reproduce the reported problem myself, but I am contacting some of
> you who might be experiencing similar problems to learn whether you are
> seeing similar things.
>
> Could you please confirm whether you are able to use your preferred number
> formatting without problems? Thanks.
>
> John Philo