Goetz writes:

> Whether anyone actually adheres to an ISO standard like
>  that is a totally different thing.  I get lots of bills,
>  price lists, account reports  where I see  #.###,## EUR .
>
>  In the same way -$##.## might not be ISO compliant (I had
>  no interest to spend the money to buy their document :-),
>  yet it is the 'standard' by matter-of-fact or mass-opinion.
>
>  Just like 2000-01-01 was not the start of the new millenium,
>  or the first day of a week is a monday (according to ISO).

Yes, that's exactly the problem.

However Tracy Pierce put me on essentially the right track with his comment
yesterday:

> sez here you just use a computer, and all is automagic...
>
>  but digging deeper appears to go where you want...
>  http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/getWR/steps/wrg_crncy.mspx

I spent the rest of the afternoon yesterday reading up on the Native Language
Support features in Windows, especially emphasizing APIs such as
GetCurrencyFormat. While this didn't actually do me any good simply because these APIs
don't tell you anything -- rather, they merely allow you to format a number in
virtually any format that you can imagine -- they did lead me to the Regional
Settings program in the Control Panel and for the first time explained to me the
differences between Spanish (Guatemala) and Spanish (Venezuela), which had
been a point of idle curiosity before. The differences between the various
"Spanish's" aren't in the Spanish language, but in the formatting of the numbers
and currencies that the various countries use.

The Regional Settings tables are Microsoft's best interpretations of the
national number and currency default usages. By going through all of the countries
that we believe we want to service, I was able to get all of the information
I needed out of Microsoft's tables.

Thanks much to everyone that responded, either privately or publicly.

Wirt Atmar

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