Re: sustainable swag

Randal wrote:
> I believe these prices may be an error -- according to what I have  
> read in Switzerland it is common to use the comma to denote the  
> decimal point for fractions -- except when the units concerned are  
> Swiss Francs. It is possible that the programmer here forgot this  
> exception and used the comma instead as with other numbers. This would  
> make these documents around $101.00 US dollars rather than $10,100.00.

That's right in all particulars. Learned more than I wanted about this 
issue when designing a data entry system which had to work for large and 
small numbers throughout the world. The validation rules were tricky 
because of this issue, together with the habit of UK/US users of using 
the comma as a thousand separator. And the fact that people are 
inconsistent, and that web browsers and web servers have (independent) 
'locale' settings which may attempt to interpret number formats, 
sometimes correctly, depending on where they think the user is from.

best

-- 
Mark Barratt
Text Matters

Information design: we help explain things using
language | design | systems | process improvement
____________________________________________
phone +44 (0)118 986 8313  email [email protected]
web http://www.textmatters.com

___________________________________________________________________

Use the following address to post a message to all subscribers: 
 [email protected]

To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your options, visit:
 http://list.InformationDesign.org/mailman/listinfo/infodesign-cafe

For all Information Design matters:
 http://InformationDesign.org

Problems? Write to:
 [email protected]
___________________________________________________________________