Culture vs UICulture

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John Bowman - 13 Jan 2005 17:28 GMT

Hi,

I'm fairly new to the .NET internationalization mechanism. I'm trying to
understand what's different about the following and when I need to use 1 vs
the other. If I retrieve:

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture
as opposed to
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture

I wrote a simple test app that retrieves their respective values into a
MessageBox:
ThreeLetterISOLanguageName
ThreeLetterWindowsLanguageName
NativeName
Name
LCID
DisplayName
EnglishName

When I run it on English US Windows XP with English US Regional settings,
all the values indicate English US as expected. However, when I switch my
regional settings (sinceI don't yet have access to a true French Windows w/
French .NET) to something else such as French France, then only the
CurrentCulture settings are changed to indicate this. The UICulture settings
remain indicating English US.

4 Q's:

1) What's the difference between CurrentCulture and CurrentUICulture and
their repsective purposes?

2) What's really the difference between changing regional settings and fully
installing genuine foreign language system from top to bottom?

3) Since I currently don't yet have access to a true French Windows w/
French .NET, to test it, what should I expect on true French Windows XP?

4) When do you use the 1 vs the other to determine the 3 letter language and
why?

TIA,

Signature

John C. Bowman
Software Engineer
Thermo Electron Scientific Instruments Div.
<Remove this before reply> john.bowman@thermo.com

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|||Cypher||| - 13 Jan 2005 18:50 GMT

Hello John;

May I suggest reading this 3-part article
http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/6997 ?
Then it will become clear as crystal to you.

I implemented and derived from it to build up my own I8n Framework.
see it in action at http://www.123roommate.com/ (still beta).

--
Olivier aka Cypher.

> Hi,
>
[quoted text clipped - 38 lines]
>
> TIA,

Reply to this Message

John Bowman - 13 Jan 2005 20:54 GMT

Cypher,

Thanks for the link. Hopefully it'll clear up the mud <g>

John

> Hello John;
>
[quoted text clipped - 55 lines]
>>
>> TIA,

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Steven Cheng - 17 Feb 2005 04:31 GMT

Hi John,

Culture is the object that used to specify localize info for non-UI things
such as
Date, Currency, Sorting, .....

While the UICulture is for specifying the locallized UI info( which UI
resource set to use).

The Region setting in the system's control panel is mapping to the Culture
rather than the UICulture.

The UICulture corresponding to the system's Input UI Language setting(
unchangable if your OS havn't MUI PACK installed).

For detailed reference, you can have a look at the microsoft's globaldev
portal, i'm sure you can find many useful info there:

http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/default.mspx

Thanks,

Steven

> Cypher,
>
[quoted text clipped - 63 lines]
>>>
>>> TIA,

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Michael (michka) Kaplan [MS] - 17 Feb 2005 06:16 GMT

"Steven Cheng" <v-schang@microsoft.com> wrote...

> The Region setting in the system's control panel is mapping to the Culture
> rather than the UICulture.

Actually, it is the GEO setting, it is not a mapping from any type of
culture or locale. :-)

Signature

MichKa [MS]
NLS Collation/Locale/Keyboard Technical Lead
Globalization Infrastructure, Fonts, and Tools
Microsoft Windows International Division

This posting is provided "AS IS" with
no warranties, and confers no rights.

Reply to this Message

Steven Cheng - 17 Feb 2005 09:55 GMT

Thanks for your correction MichKa ,

Yes, I should say those region settings has the same functions in WIN32 app
like the
Culture in .NET app. Also, in WIN32 seems all these settings are called
XXXLocale which are very confusing. :(

Steven

> "Steven Cheng" <v-schang@microsoft.com> wrote...
>
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> Actually, it is the GEO setting, it is not a mapping from any type of
> culture or locale. :-)

Reply to this Message

Michael (michka) Kaplan [MS] - 17 Feb 2005 13:12 GMT

I agree with you on the confusion. I think the logic was that there were
enough subtle differences between the .NET framework analogue to the Win32
locale that a new name seemed like the easiest way to capture the fact that
they are indeed two different (if analogous) beasts....

So, it is like this:

default user locale (standards and formats)
becomes
CurrentCulture

default user UI language
becomes
CurrentUICulture

User GEOID (location)
becomes
CurrentRegion

I should blog about thus someday (http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap).

:-)

Signature

> Thanks for your correction MichKa ,
>
[quoted text clipped - 13 lines]
> > Actually, it is the GEO setting, it is not a mapping from any type of
> > culture or locale. :-)

Reply to this Message

Steven Cheng - 21 Feb 2005 10:28 GMT

En, yes.

Or can I say that the rules(MS suggest us to follow ) for using OS locale
setting in win32 now become the buildin classes and interfaces in .NET(with
much clearer names)?

:-)

Thanks & Regards,

Steven

>I agree with you on the confusion. I think the logic was that there were
> enough subtle differences between the .NET framework analogue to the Win32
[quoted text clipped - 38 lines]
>> > Actually, it is the GEO setting, it is not a mapping from any type of
>> > culture or locale. :-)

Reply to this Message

Michael (michka) Kaplan [MS] - 22 Feb 2005 18:11 GMT

Yes, the goal was indeed more intuitive names.... of course people who were
used to the old ones see it as shuffling without cause, so I guess in the
end it all evens out....

Signature

> En, yes.
>
[quoted text clipped - 49 lines]
> >> > Actually, it is the GEO setting, it is not a mapping from any type of
> >> > culture or locale. :-)

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