# locale files - Part I

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/locale-files-part-i/1197>\
**Category:** CSL Development\
**Created:** [October 6, 2013, 12:52pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/locale-files-part-i/1197 "2013-10-06T12:52:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Paulo\_Ney\_de\_Souza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/76d3ee/32.png) [@Paulo\_Ney\_de\_Souza](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Paulo_Ney_de_Souza)\
**Post date:** [October 6, 2013, 12:52pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/locale-files-part-i/1197/1 "2013-10-06T12:52:02Z")

</div>

This is a long (series of) e-mail containing a request for a small change,  
a request for a not-so-small that I discussed in private with  
Rintze and then a proposal for a broader framework to manage the "locale"  
files and facilitate the i18n of CSL further and provide some  
cross-pollination with other open source projects (first in line being  
BibLaTeX).

1- The simple request: The renaming of the file “locales-ar-AR.xml”. While  
it is understandable that the file contain only generic stuff of Modern  
Arabic, and the person that named it probably tried to copy the other  
generic language naming: en-EN, fr-FR, pt-PT, de-DE (repeating the  
token)… in this case it created an aberration. The first token "ar"  
stands for the language abbreviation (Arabic) and the second “AR” for the  
country (Argentina) making for a very odd combination of a locale never  
used before!!! 🙂

My proposal is that the name gets changed to a generic "locales-ar.xml"  
just like the name of the Basque file (locales-eu.xml) , and then other  
locale-specific arabic files -ar-DZ, -ar-AE, -ar-EG, … could be build  
(fairly quickly) from considering the changes to a central file.

The incorrect labelling of that file is a sign of a bigger problem with the  
structure of the locale files in CSL - the lack of a standard place to  
place language-dependent tokens… which takes me to the next request,  
coming on Part II.

Paulo Ney

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Sebastian\_Karcher](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/sebastian_karcher/32/176_2.png) [@Sebastian\_Karcher](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Sebastian_Karcher)\
**Post date:** [October 6, 2013, 5:04pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/locale-files-part-i/1197/2 "2013-10-06T17:04:20Z")

</div>

ar-AR is obviously wrong. I’d be happy to accept a pull request fixing that  
to ar or one of us will do it eventually, I’m a bit swamped atm.On Sun, Oct 6, 2013 at 5:52 AM, Paulo Ney de Souza \<@Paulo\_Ney\_de\_Souza\>wrote:

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rintze\_Zelle](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/rintze_zelle/32/175_2.png) [@Rintze\_Zelle](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Rintze_Zelle)\
**Post date:** [October 7, 2013, 12:33am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/locale-files-part-i/1197/3 "2013-10-07T00:33:54Z")

</div>

The main question here is whether we want a country-specific code,  
like “ar-EG” (Egypt), or just the language tag “ar”. So far we always  
included country subtags wherever possible. The only exception was  
"eu" for Basque, since that language isn’t associated with a country.

Since Paulo mentioned the locale contains Modern Standard Arabic  
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern\_Standard\_Arabic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Standard_Arabic)), which doesn’t  
have a clear country of origin, I suggest “ar”. That might also be  
more in line with what we want to do with other locale files (like  
renaming “de-DE” to “de”, see Paulo’s follow-up posts).

Rintze

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Frank\_Bennett](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/frank_bennett/32/198_2.png) [@Frank\_Bennett](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Frank_Bennett)\
**Post date:** [October 7, 2013, 12:43am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/locale-files-part-i/1197/4 "2013-10-07T00:43:47Z")

</div>

citeproc-js can adapt to using two-character language codes as first  
fallback without much trouble (if the corresponding locale files are  
available).

For term-specific fallback, we already handle that in the context of  
locale variants embedded in the styles. Making that work for locales  
themselves in citeproc-js should not require much effort (it may work  
that way already).

That’s for citeproc-js only, of course.

Frank

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rintze\_Zelle](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/rintze_zelle/32/175_2.png) [@Rintze\_Zelle](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Rintze_Zelle)\
**Post date:** [October 7, 2013, 1:23am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/locale-files-part-i/1197/5 "2013-10-07T01:23:15Z")

</div>

Actually, fallback within the locale files themselves is already part  
of the CSL spec:  
[http://citationstyles.org/downloads/specification.html#locale-fallback](http://citationstyles.org/downloads/specification.html#locale-fallback)  
(see steps 4 to 6). It just never really came up before because (with  
very few exceptions) all current locale files contain the same set of  
terms.

Rintze