Issue 34559

Summary:	Language setting affects decimal point character
Product:	Calc	Reporter:	ianst <ian>
Component:	formatting	Assignee:	spreadsheet <spreadsheet>
Status:	CLOSED DUPLICATE	QA Contact:	issues@sc <issues>
Severity:	Trivial
Priority:	P3	CC:	issues
Version:	OOo 1.1.2
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	PC
OS:	Windows 2000
Issue Type:	DEFECT	Latest Confirmation in:	---
Developer Difficulty:	---

Description ianst 2004-09-23 16:34:12 UTC

The problem is that using OOo 1.1.2 with a South African English setting the 
decimal point as a "." is no longer recognised; instead a comma "," has to be 
used.  

The work-around is to set the language to USA English, however this means that 
the currency also has to be changed.

The convention, irrespective of whether it is correct or not, has always been 
to use a decimal point i.e. "." , a fullstop and to be able to use the "." on 
the numeric keypad as a decimal delimiter.  This seems to have changed at 1.1.2 
as it has worked as expected up until OOo1.1.1

If the language setting is not changed the "." is interpreted as a date 
delimiter and values entered appear to be shown as dates eg, if 1.1 is entered 
a value of 04/01/01 is displayed; if entered in a formula eg =sum
(12345.35+12.45), #NAME? is displayed.

Comment 1 ct999 2004-09-23 20:20:31 UTC

Chris Tanner, 9/23/04

I was able to replicate your test cases with identical results.  This
illustrated a difference in South African English standards between
OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 and older versions:

In OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 and OpenOffice.org 1.1.0, I did the following:
1)      Open a new Spreadsheet
2)      Changed language setting to English (South African) via
Tools->Options->Languages
3)      Typed various decimal numbers such as “1.1” and “1.1111”
4)      Tested basic functions such as “=SUM(12345.35+12.45)”

My results for OpenOffice 1.1.2 were identical to yours: simple decimal numbers
like “1.1” are converted to dates, just as if “1/1” were entered in the English
(USA) language.  Numbers with more than 3 digits after the decimal (i.e.
“1.1111”) remove the period and convert the number to an integer.  Also, the
summation function gives the same “#NAME?” result for values that are normally
accepted for the English (USA) language, such as: “=SUM(35.29; 259.2)”

My testing also supported your results that suggested a difference between using
English (South African) in OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 and 1.1.0.  South African
English with version 1.1.0 yielded results identical to the English (USA)
language, agreeing with the “traditional” definition of “.” and ‘,” 
Consequently, I researched the South African English language, and it
surprisingly appears that OpenOffice 1.1.2 correctly treats decimals and commas:
“Commas are never used this way in English, except in South Africa”
(http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Comma_(punctuation) 2004).

Even though my results fully agreed with yours, I’m eager to believe that this
change between versions is an enhancement instead of a defect.  Following are
the specifications of the system on which I tested:

Two Operating Systems I tested on:
a) Microsoft Windows 2000 Build 5.00.2195, Service Pack 4
b) Fedora Core Linux (kernel 2.6.7)

Intel Pentium 4 at 2.80 GHz
1 Gigabyte DDR RAM

Two OpenOffice.org versions:
1.1.0; 1.1.2

Comment 2 frank 2004-09-24 09:12:00 UTC

Hi,

this is a double to Issue 30568.

Frank

*** This issue has been marked as a duplicate of 30568 ***

Comment 3 frank 2004-09-24 09:12:15 UTC

closed double

Comment 4 lgaterarin 2010-11-11 03:30:11 UTC

Created attachment 74137