Wed 31 May 2006 06:53:37 AM UTC, comment #2:
From the dev-pspp mailing list:
On Sun, Mar 19, 2006 at 05:26:47PM -0800, Ben Pfaff wrote:
Let me elaborate. Here is the plan that I envision:
i. PSPP adopts a single locale that defaults to the system locale
but can be changed with SET LOCALE. (I'll call this the "PSPP
locale".)
ii. All string data in all casefiles and dictionaries is in the
PSPP locale, or at least we make that assumption.
iii. The GET command assumes by default that data read in is in
the PSPP locale. If the user provides a LOCALE subcommand
specifying something different, then missing values and
value label keys are converted as the dictionary is read and
string case data is converted "on the fly" as data is read
from the file. We can also provide a NOCONVERT subcommand
(with a better name, I hope) that flags string variables
that are not to be converted.
iv. The SAVE command assumes by default that data written out is
to be in the PSPP locale. If the user provides a LOCALE
subcommand specifying something different, then we convert
string data, etc., as we write it, and again exceptions can
be accommodated.
v. Users who want accurate translations, as in your survey
example, choose a reasonable PSPP locale, e.g. something based
on UTF-8.
vi. We look into the possibility of tagging system files with a
locale. The system file format is extensible enough that
this would really just be a matter of testing whether SPSS
will complain loudly about our extension records or just
silently ignore them.
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