Bug#142072: acknowledged by developer (Re: libc6: pre Euro currencies obseleted too soon)
At Mon, 31 Mar 2003 21:36:20 +1000,
Christopher Yeoh wrote:
>
> At 2003/3/31 21:02+1000 Anthony Towns writes:
> > On Mon, Mar 31, 2003 at 08:37:36PM +1000, Christopher Yeoh wrote:
> > > > Moreover, who or what program does this use?
> > > Well I can guarantee that the LSB certification test suite won't even
> > > install properly without support for these locales :-)
> >
> > Which is a bug in the test suite -- the test suite can fail, sure,
> > but shouldn't fail to *install*.
>
> It doesn't fail to install, it fails to install *properly* - ie it is
> unable to setup the dummy locale information correctly (localedef
> rejects some of the locale data) and as a result some of the tests
> fail during the test suite execution.
It's ridiculous that the system provides only obsolete currency
symbols only because of conforming to the standard, even the real
world uses/requires the new currency symbols. We take precedence over
the world real requirement. The LSB certification test program or the
standard becomes obsolete. If it fails to install, then fix the test
suite.
The standard shows the normative rule, unless it stands on the rock
real world standard or rule. If the standard does not fulill such
criteria due to the transition of the times, we can say it's obsolete,
and the real world requirement should use instead of such old
documents.
The test suite checks the standard conformances. If the standard
becomes obsolete, the test suite also becomes obsolete.
> > This issue was also part of Bug#156821 which was meant to already be
> > fixed, fwiw.
>
> I think the patch has been accidentally lost somewhere. I'll check the
> latest source again, but I've been running unstable and have been
> having to manually patch libc to do test suite runs (even late last
> year and early this year). localedef on my laptop is behaving as if
> the patch hasn't been applied (I have libc6 2.3.1-13 installed).
Euro currency symbols are applied, so I marked as "fixed" in #156821.
At Mon, 31 Mar 2003 20:37:36 +1000,
Christopher Yeoh wrote:
> The initial bug report describes the misinterpretation of the standard
> that led to the initial removal of these currencies. FWIW the analysis
> of the problem was done by Andrew Josey who is the chair of the Austin
> Group, the group who developed and maintain the POSIX.1-2001
> specification.
>
> POSIX.1-2001 references ISO4217.
>
> This is in the initial bug report, but just to highlight the important bits
> (text following is from Andrew Josey):
>
> The Austin group spec says:
>
> "The international currency symbol. The operand shall be a four-character
> string, with the first three characters containing the alphabetic
> international currency symbol in accordance with those specified in the
> ISO 4217 standard. The fourth character shall be the character used to
> separate the international currency symbol from the monetary quantity."
>
>
> This can take the value of any currency symbol
> defined in ISO 4217 -- there is no requirement that this be "valid
> for current cash transactions" . I suspect the data in this file
> has been drawn from Table 1 of ISO 4217 and has neglected Tables 2 and
> Table 3 which are important tables.
You should also read ISO/IEC standards. SUSv3/POSIX is refered from
the ISO/IEC standard efforts.
Some (draft) standards say they're not EUR, for example:
ISO/IEC 15897 - " Procedures for registration of cultural elements"
http://www.nni.nl/nl/act/spec/local/docs/iso_iec_15897_ned.pdf
IMO, the model of monetary category is not well created and not
established for the historical currency symbols yet.
> I obtained a copy of ISO 4217:2001.
> This includes three tables, table A-1 is the Currency and funds code
> list, table A-2 is for Funds code registered with a maintenance agency,
> and table A-3 lists codes for historic demoninations of currencies,
>
> Table A-1 contains the european countries who have adopted
> the Euro, together with the Euro and their other pre-Euro currency
> and a note pointing to a timetable when the currency will be withdrawn.
> This is not a withdrawal of the currency symbol in the ISO standard.
> I would anticipate that a future revision of 4217 will
> migrate the DEM, FRF etc to Table A-3.
>
> Implementations that are disallowing currency symbols now obsoleted
> by the Euro are doing so in error . The DEM and FRF symbols
> are listed in 4217:2001.
>
> I anticipate that the current European currencies presently
> in Table 1 in ISO 4217:2001 will migrate to table 3.
> Limiting this to "valid" currencies as in what is valid for cash
> transactions does not allow for historical processing applications nor the
> fact that the central banks plan to continue accepting certain currencies
> even though they are not the valid cash for a particular currency.
Repeatedly the real world uses mainly EUR, not DEM/FRF. The standard
does not follow our "just now" real life.
BTW, do you know the status of draft version of the next coming
ISO-4217 (ISO-4217:2003 or so)? I think they will update the table in
the next version.
Regards,
-- gotom
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