Commands for "regional settings"

Posted February 28, 2011 by Kim Forde-Folle
NAADSM 3.1

The tools menu in NAADSM 3.1 offers commands for "regional settings" which allows users to change the characters used for CSV imports and exports.  Can you provide an example of how this feature is used and why someone might find this feature helpful?

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Re: Commands for "regional settings"

Posted March 1, 2011 by Aaron Reeves

The "regional settings" options are intended for international users, who won't always use US formatting conventions. For example, in the US, a comma (,) is used to separate thousands and a period (.) is used as a decimal indicator. In many other countries, the convention is the opposite, which can cause confusion. Consider, for example, the number that written as "10,357": in the US, this number is "ten thousand three hundred and fifty seven", but in South America and many other parts of the world, this number is "ten and three hundred fifty seven thousandths".

Similarly, in the US, a comma (,) is used to separate values in a CSV file, but because of the potential confusion identified above, a semicolon (;) is used as the list delimiter for a CSV file.

The NAADSM user interface will automatically adjust to a user's settings as specified in Microsoft Windows (see "Regional and Language Options" in the Windows Control Panel). A user's individual settings won't help, though, if s/he receives a CSV file that was produced on a different computer using different regional settings. The options listed under Tools -> Regional Settings... in NAADSM allow the application to read and write CSV files with customized settings for easier exchange between international users.

I hope this helps!

Aaron