ISO/IEC TR 14652:2004

Information technology — Specification method for cultural conventions

ISO/IEC TR 14652:2004 specifies a description format for the specification of cultural conventions, a description format for character sets, and a description format for binding character names to ISO/IEC 10646, plus a set of default values for some of these items. The specification is upward compatible with POSIX locale specifications - a locale conformant to POSIX specifications will also be conformant to the specifications in ISO/IEC TR 14652:2004, while the reverse condition will not hold. The descriptions are intended to be coded in text files to be used via Application Programming Interfaces, that are expected to be developed for a number of systems which comply with ISO/IEC 9945. An alignment effort has been undertaken for this specification to be aligned with the revision of the ISO/IEC 9945 standard published in 2003.

Technologies de l'information — Méthode de modélisation des conventions culturelles

General Information

• Status: Withdrawn
• Publication Date: 20-Sep-2004
• Withdrawal Date: 20-Sep-2004
• ICS: 35.020 - Information technology (IT) in general
• ICS: 35.240.01 - Application of information technology in general
• Technical Committee: ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22 - Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces
• Drafting Committee: ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22 - Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces
• Current Stage: 9599 - Withdrawal of International Standard
• Start Date: 02-Apr-2008
• Completion Date: 12-Feb-2026

Standards Content (Sample)

TECHNICAL ISO/IEC
REPORT TR
First edition
2004-09-15
Information technology — Specification
method for cultural conventions
Technologies de l'information — Méthode de modélisation des
conventions culturelles
Reference number
©
ISO/IEC 2004
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©  ISO/IEC 2004
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ii © ISO/IEC 2004 — All rights reserved

Contents Page
FOREWORD iv
INTRODUCTION v
1 SCOPE 1
2 NORMATIVE REFERENCES 1
3 TERMS, DEFINITIONS AND NOTATIONS 2
4 FDCC-set 7
4.1 FDCC-set description 7
4.2 LC_IDENTIFICATION 12
4.3 LC_CTYPE (controversial) 13
4.4 LC_COLLATE 27
4.5 LC_MONETARY (controversial) 39
4.6 LC_NUMERIC 43
4.7 LC_TIME (controversial) 44
4.8 LC_MESSAGES 51
4.9 LC_XLITERATE (controversial) 52
4.10 LC_NAME 54
4.11 LC_ADDRESS 55
4.12 LC_TELEPHONE 57
5 CHARMAP 58
6 REPERTOIREMAP (controversial) 63

Annex A (informative) DIFFERENCES FROM POSIX (ISO/IEC 9945) 92
Annex B (informative) RATIONALE 94
Annex C (informative) BNF GRAMMAR 107
Annex D (informative) OUTSTANDING ISSUES 112
INDEX 116
BIBLIOGRAPHY 119
© ISO/IEC 2004 — All rights reserved iii

Foreword
ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (the International Electrotechnical
Commission) form the specialized system for worldwide standardization. National bodies that are
members of ISO or IEC participate in the development of International Standards through technical
committees established by the respective organization to deal with particular fields of technical
activity. ISO and IEC technical committees collaborate in fields of mutual interest. Other
international organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO and IEC, also
take part in the work. In the field of information technology, ISO and IEC have established a joint
technical committee, ISO/IEC JTC 1.
International Standards are drafted in accordance with the rules given in the ISO/IEC Directives,
Part 2.
The main task of the joint technical committee is to prepare International Standards. Draft
International Standards adopted by the joint technical committee are circulated to national bodies for
voting. Publication as an International Standard requires approval by at least 75 % of the national
bodies casting a vote.
In exceptional circumstances, the joint technical committee may propose the publication of a
Technical Report of one of the following types:
— type 1, when the required support cannot be obtained for the publication of an International
Standard, despite repeated efforts;
— type 2, when the subject is still under technical development or where for any other reason there
is the future but not immediate possibility of an agreement on an International Standard;
— type 3, when the joint technical committee has collected data of a different kind from that which
is normally published as an International Standard (“state of the art”, for example).
Technical Reports of types 1 and 2 are subject to review within three years of publication, to decide
whether they can be transformed into International Standards. Technical Reports of type 3 do not
necessarily have to be reviewed until the data they provide are considered to be no longer valid or
useful.
Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of
patent rights. ISO and IEC shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.
ISO/IEC TR 14652, which is a Technical Report of type 1, was prepared by Joint Technical
Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology, Subcommittee SC 22, Programming languages,
their environments and system software interfaces.
This document is published as a type 1 Technical Report on the request of a number of member
bodies, whose concerns are recorded in Annex D.

iv © ISO/IEC 2004 — All rights reserved

Introduction
This Technical Report defines a general mechanism to specify cultural conventions, and it
defines formats for a number of specific cultural conventions in the areas of character
classification and conversion, sorting, number formatting, monetary formatting, date
formatting, message display, addressing of persons, postal address formatting, and
telephone number handling.
There are a number of benefits coming from this Technical Report:
Rigid specification Using this Technical Report, a user can rigidly specify a
number of the cultural conventions that apply to the
information technology environment of the user.
Cultural adaptability If an application has been designed and built in a
culturally neutral manner, the application may use the
specifications as data to its APIs, and thus the same
application may accommodate different users in a
culturally acceptable way to each of the users, without
change of the binary application.
Productivity This Technical Report specifies those cultural
conventions and how to specify data for them. With that
data an application developer is relieved from getting the
different information to support all the cultural
environments for the expected customers of the product.
The application developer is thus ensured of culturally
correct behaviour as specified by the customer, and
possibly more markets may be reached as customers may
have the possibility to provide the data themselves for
markets that were not targeted.
Uniform behaviour When a number of applications share one cultural
specification, which may be supplied from the user or
provided by the application or operating system, their
behaviour for cultural adaptation becomes uniform.
The specification format is independent of platforms and specific encoding, and targeted to
be usable from a wide range of programming languages.
A number of cultural conventions, such as spelling, hyphenation rules and terminology, are
not specifiable with this Technical Report, but it provides mechanisms to define new
categories and also new keywords within existing categories. An internationalized
application may take advantage of information provided with the FDCC-set (such as the
language) to provide further internationalized services to the user.
This Technical Report defines a format compatible with the one used in the International
string ordering standard, ISO/IEC 14651. This Technical Report is upward compatible with
the ISO/IEC 9945-1:2003 POSIX, particularly its clauses 6 and 7. The major extensions
© ISO/IEC 2004 - All rights reserved v

from that text are listed in annex A. This Technical Report has enhanced functionality in a
number of areas such as ISO/IEC 10646 support, more classification of characters,
transliteration, dual (multi) currency support, enhanced date and time formatting, personal
name writing, postal address formatting, telephone number handling, and management of
categories. There is enhanced support for character sets including ISO/IEC 2022 handling
and an enhanced method to separate the specification of cultural conventions from an
actual encoding via a description of the character repertoire employed. A standard set of
values for all the categories has been defined covering the repertoire of ISO/IEC 10646-1,
as referenced in the normative references clause.
The Technical Report was originally scheduled for adoption as an International Standard,
but a number of members of ISO and IEC found the specification problematical. It was
then decided to convert the specification into a Technical Report type I. Annex D lists a
number of issues that some members of ISO and IEC have with the specification.
The following clauses are thus marked as controversial:
4.3 LC_CTYPE
4.5 LC_MONETARY
4.7 LC_TIME
4.9 LC_XLITERATE
6 REPERTOIREMAP
vi © ISO/IEC 2004 - All rights reserved

TECHNICAL REPORT         ISO/IEC TR 14652:2004(E)
Information technology —
Specification method for cultural conventions
1 SCOPE
This Technical Report specifies a description format for the specification of cultural
conventions, a description format for character sets, and a description format for binding
character names to ISO/IEC 10646, plus a set of default values for some of these items.
The specification is upward compatible with POSIX locale specifications - a locale
conformant to POSIX specifications will also be conformant to the specifications in this
Technical Report, while the reverse condition will not hold. The descriptions are intended
to be coded in text files to be used via Application Programming Interfaces, that are
expected to be developed for a number of systems which comply with ISO/IEC 9945. An
alignment effort has been undertaken for this specification to be aligned with the revision
of the ISO/IEC 9945 standard published in 2003.
2 NORMATIVE REFERENCES
The following referenced documents are indispensible for the application of this document.
For dated references, only the edition cited applies. For undated references, the latest
edition of the referenced document (including any amendments) applies.
ISO 639 (all parts), Codes for the representation of names of languages.
ISO/IEC 2022, Information technology - Character code structure and extension
techniques.
ISO 3166 (all parts), Codes for the representation of names of countries and their
subdivisions.
ISO 4217, Codes for the representation of currencies and funds.
ISO 8601, Data elements and interchange formats - Information interchange -
Representation of dates and times.
ISO/IEC 9945:2003 Information technology - Portable Operating System Interface
(POSIX).
ISO/IEC 10646:2003, Information technology - Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character
Set (UCS). Only the fixed collection 301 plus the characters U20AC EURO SIGN and the
UFFFC OBJECT REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (corresponding to UNICODE 2.1) and
the control characters U0000.U001F are used in this document.
ISO/IEC 14651:2001, Information technology - International string ordering and
comparison - Method for comparing character strings and description of the common
template tailorable ordering.
ISO/IEC 15897:1999, Information technology - Procedures for registration of cultural
elements.
© ISO/IEC 2004 - All rights reserved 1

3 TERMS, DEFINITIONS AND NOTATIONS
3.1 Terms and definitions
For the purposes of this document, the following terms and definitions apply.
3.1.1 Bytes and characters
3.1.1.1
byte:
An individually addressable unit of data storage that is equal to or larger than an octet,
used to store a character or a portion of a character.
A byte is composed of a contiguous sequence of bits, the number of which is
implementation defined. The least significant bit is called the low-order bit; the most
significant bit is called the high-order bit.
3.1.1.2
character:
A member of a set of elements used for the organization, control or representation of data.
3.1.1.3
coded character:
A sequence of one or more bytes representing a single character.
3.1.1.4
text file:
A file that contains characters organized into one or more lines.
3.1.2 cultural and other major concepts
3.1.2.1
cultural convention:
A data item for information technology that may vary dependent on language, territory, or
other cultural habits.
3.1.2.2
FDCC:
A Formal Definition of a Cultural Convention, that is a cultural convention put into a
formal definition scheme.
3.1.2.3
FDCC-set:
A Set of Formal Definitions of Cultural Conventions (FDCC’s). The definition of the
subset of a user’s information technology environment that depends on language and
cultural conventions.
Note: the FDCC-set is a superset of the "locale" term in C and POSIX.
2 © ISO/IEC 2004 - All rights reserved

3.1.2.4
charmap:
A definition of a mapping between symbolic character names and character codes, plus
related information.
3.1.2.5
repertoiremap:
A definition of a mapping between symbolic character names and characters for the
repertoire of characters used in a FDCC-set, further described in clause 6.
3.1.3 FDCC categories related
3.1.3.1
character class:
A named set of characters sharing an attribute associated with the name of the class.
3.1.3.2
collation:
The logical ordering of strings according to defined precedence rules.
3.1.3.3
collating element:
The smallest entity used to determine logical ordering.
See collating sequence. A collating element consists of either a single character, or two or
more characters collating as a single entity. The LC_COLLATE category in the associated
FDCC-set determines the set of collating elements.
3.1.3.4
multicharacter collating element:
A sequence of two or more characters that collate as an entity.
For example, in some languages two characters are sorted as one letter, as in the case for
Danish and Norwegian "aa".
3.1.3.5
collating sequence:
The relative order of collating elements as determined by the setting of the LC_COLLATE
category in the applied FDCC-set.
3.1.3.6
equivalence class:
A set of collating elements with the same primary collation weight.
Elements in an equivalence class are typically elements that naturally group together, such
as all accented letters based on the same letter.
The collation order of elements within an equivalence class is determined by the weights
assigned on any subsequent levels after the primary weight.
© ISO/IEC 2004 - All rights reserved 3

3.2 Notations
The following notations and common conventions for specifications apply to this Technical
Report:
3.2.1 Notation for defining syntax
In this Technical Report, the description of an individual record in a FDCC-set is done
using the syntax notation given in the following.
The syntax notation looks as follows:
"",[,,.,]
The is given in a format string enclosed in double quotes, followed by a number
of parameters, separated by commas. It is similar to the format specification defined in
clause 5 in the ISO/IEC 9945-1:2003 standard and the format specification used in C
language printf() function. The format of each parameter is given by an escape sequence as
follows:
%s specifies a string
%d specifies a decimal integer
%c specifies a character
%o specifies an octal integer
%x specifies a hexadecimal integer
A " " (an empty character position) in the syntax string represents one or more
characters.
All other characters in the format string represent themselves, except:
%% specifies a single %
\n specifies an end-of-line
The notation "." is used to specify that repetition of the previous specification is optional,
and this is done in both the format string and in the parameter list.
3.2.3 Portable character set
A set of symbolic names for characters in Table 1, which is called the portable character
set, is used in character description text of this specification. The first eight entries in
Table 1 are defined in ISO/IEC 6429 and the rest is defined in ISO/IEC 9945-1:2003 with
some definitions from ISO/IEC 10646-1.
Table 1: Portable character set
Symbolic name Glyph UCS Description
NULL (NUL)
BELL (BEL)
BACKSPACE (BS)
CHARACTER TABULATION (HT)
4 © ISO/IEC 2004 - All rights reserved

CARRIAGE RETURN (CR)
LINE FEED (LF)
LINE TABULATION (VT)
FORM FEED (FF)
SPACE
! EXCLAMATION MARK
" QUOTATION MARK
# NUMBER SIGN
$ DOLLAR SIGN
% PERCENT SIGN
& AMPERSAND
’ APOSTROPHE
( LEFT PARENTHESIS
) RIGHT PARENTHESIS
* ASTERISK
+ PLUS SIGN
, COMMA
- HYPHEN-MINUS
- HYPHEN-MINUS
. FULL STOP
. FULL STOP
/ SOLIDUS
/ SOLIDUS
0 DIGIT ZERO
1 DIGIT ONE
2 DIGIT TWO
3 DIGIT THREE
4 DIGIT FOUR
5 DIGIT FIVE
6 DIGIT SIX
7 DIGIT SEVEN
8 DIGIT EIGHT
9 DIGIT NINE
: COLON
; SEMICOLON
< LESS-THAN SIGN
= EQUALS SIGN
> GREATER-THAN SIGN
? QUESTION MARK
@ COMMERCIAL AT
A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A
B LATIN CAPITAL LETTER B
C LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C
D LATIN CAPITAL LETTER D
E LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E
F LATIN CAPITAL LETTER F
G LATIN CAPITAL LETTER G
H LATIN CAPITAL LETTER H
I LATIN CAPITAL LETTER I
J LATIN CAPITAL LETTER J
K LATIN CAPITAL LETTER K
L LATIN CAPITAL LETTER L
M LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M
N LATIN CAPITAL LETTER N
O LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O

p LATIN SMALL LETTER P
q LATIN SMALL LETTER Q
r LATIN SMALL LETTER R
s LATIN SMALL LETTER S
t LATIN SMALL LETTER T
u LATIN SMALL LETTER U
v LATIN SMALL LETTER V
w LATIN SMALL LETTER W
x LATIN SMALL LETTER X
y LATIN SMALL LETTER Y
z LATIN SMALL LETTER Z
{ LEFT CURLY BRACKET
{ LEFT CURLY BRACKET
| VERTICAL LINE
} RIGHT CURLY BRACKET
} RIGHT CURLY BRACKET
~ TILDE
This Technical Report may use other symbolic character names than the above in
examples, to illustrate the use of the range of symbols allowed by the syntax specified in
4.1.1.
6 © ISO/IEC 2004 - All rights reserved

4 FDCC-set
A FDCC-set is the definition of the subset of a user’s information technology environment
that depends on language and cultural conventions. It is made up from one or more
categories. Each category is identified by its name and controls specific aspects of the
behaviour of components of the system. This Technical Report defines the following
categories:
LC_IDENTIFICATION Versions and status of categories
LC_CTYPE Character classification, case conversion and code
transformation.
LC_COLLATE Collation order.
LC_TIME Date and time formats.
LC_NUMERIC Numeric, non-monetary formatting.
LC_MONETARY Monetary formatting.
LC_MESSAGES Formats of informative and diagnostic messages and
interactive responses.
LC_XLITERATE Character transliteration.
LC_NAME Format of writing personal names.
LC_ADDRESS Format of postal addresses.
LC_TELEPHONE Format for telephone numbers, and other telephone
information.
Note: In future editions of this Technical Report further categories may be added.
Other category names beginning with the 3 characters "LC_" are reserved for future
standardization, except for category names beginning with the five characters "LC_X_"
which is not used for future addition of categories specified in this Technical Report. An
application may thus use category names beginning with the five characters "LC_X_" for
application defined categories to avoid clashes with future standardized categories.
This Technical Report also defines an FDCC-set named "i18n" with values for some of the
above categories in order to simplify FDCC-set descriptions for a number of cultures. The
contents of "i18n" categories should not necessarily be considered as the most commonly
accepted values, while in many cases it could be the recommended values. The complete
"i18n" FDCC-set is defined as the sum of the "i18n" categories specified in the clauses
below.
4.1 FDCC-set description
FDCC-sets are described with the syntax presented in this subclause. For the purposes of
this Technical Report, the text is referred to as the FDCC-set definition text or FDCC-set
source text.
The FDCC-set definition text contains one or more FDCC-set category source definitions,
and does not contain more than one definition for the same FDCC-set category. If the text
contains source definitions for more than one category, application-defined categories, if
present, appears after the categories defined by this clause. A category source definition
contains either the definition of a category or a copy directive. In the event that some of
the information for a FDCC-set category, as specified in this Technical Report, is missing
© ISO/IEC 2004 - All rights reserved 7

from the FDCC-set source definition, the behaviour of that category, if it is referenced, is
unspecified. A FDCC-set category is the normal way of specifying a single FDCC.
There are no naming conventions for FDCC-sets specified in this Technical Report, but
clause 6.8 in ISO/IEC 15897:1999 specifies naming rules for POSIX locales, charmaps and
repertoiremaps, that may also be applied to FDCC-sets, charmaps and repertoiremaps
specified according to this Technical Report.
A category source definition consists of a category header, a category body, and a
category trailer. A category header consists of the character string naming of the category,
beginning with the characters "LC_". The category trailer consists of the string "END",
followed by one or more "blank"s and the string used in the corresponding category
header.
The category body consists of one or more lines of text. Each line is one of the following:
- a line containing an identifier, optionally followed by one or more operands. Identifiers
are either keywords, identifying a particular FDCC, or collating elements, or section
symbols,
- one of transliteration statements defined in 4.3.
In addition to the keywords defined in this Technical Report, the source can contain
application-defined keywords. Each keyword within a category has a unique name (i.e.,
two categories can have a commonly-named keyword); no keyword starts with the
characters "LC_". Identifiers are separated from the operands by one or more "blank"s.
Operands are characters, collating elements, section symbols, or strings of characters.
Strings are enclosed in double-quotes. Literal double-quotes within strings are preceded by
the , described below. When a keyword is followed by more than one
operand, the operands are separated by semicolons; "blank"s are allowed before and/or
after a semicolon.
4.1.1 Character representation
Individual characters, characters in strings, and collating elements are represented using
symbolic names, UCS notation or characters themselves, or as octal, hexadecimal, or
decimal constants as defined below. When constant notation is used, the resultant
FDCC-set definitions need not be portable between systems.
(0) The left angle bracket (<) is a reserved symbol, denoting the
start of a symbolic name; when used to represent itself
outside a symbolic name it is preceded by the escape
character.
(1) A character can be represented via a symbolic name,
enclosed within angle brackets (< and >). The symbolic
name, including the angle brackets, exactly matches a
symbolic name defined in a charmap or a repertoiremap to be
used, and is replaced by a character value determined from
the value associated with the symbolic name in the charmap
8 © ISO/IEC 2004 - All rights reserved

or a value associated via a repertoiremap. Repertoiremaps
have predefined symbolic names for UCS characters, see
clause 6. A FDCC-set may also use the UCS notation of
clause 6 to represent characters, without a repertoiremap
being defined for the FDCC-set. Use of the escape character
or a right angle bracket within a symbolic name is invalid
unless the character is preceded by the escape character.
Example: ; ""
The items (2), (3), (4) and (5) are deprecated and are retained for compatibility with the
POSIX standard. FDCC-sets should be specified in a coded character set independent way,
using symbolic names. To make actual use of the FDCC-set, it is used together with
charmaps and/or repertoiremaps, so that the symbolic character names can be resolved into
the actual character encoding used.
(2) A character can be represented by the character itself, in
which case the value of the character is application-defined.
Within a string, the double-quote character, the escape
character, and the right angle bracket character are escaped
(preceded by the escape character) to be interpreted as the
character itself. Outside strings, the characters
, ; < > escape_char
are escaped by the escape character to be interpreted as the
character itself.
Example: c ä "May"
(3) A character can be represented as an octal constant. An octal
constant is specified as the escape character followed by two
or more octal digits. Each constant represents a byte value.
Example: \143; \347; "\115"
(4) A character can be represented as a hexadecimal constant. A
hexadecimal constant is specified as the escape character
followed by an x followed by two or more hexadecimal
digits. Each constant represents a byte value.
Example: \x63;\xe7;
(5) A character can be represented as a decimal constant. A
decimal constant is specified as the escape character followed
by a d followed by two or more decimal digits. Each constant
represents a byte value.
Example: \d99; \d231;
© ISO/IEC 2004 - All rights reserved 9

(6) Multibyte characters can be represented by concatenated
constants specified in byte order with the last constant
specifying the least significant byte of the character.
Concatenated constants can include a mix of the above
character representations.
Example: \143\xe7; "\115\xe7\d171"
Only characters existing in the character set for which the FDCC-set definition is created
are specified, whether using symbolic names, the characters themselves, or octal, decimal,
or hexadecimal constants. If a charmap is present, only characters defined in the charmap
can be specified using octal, decimal, or hexadecimal constants. Symbolic names not
present in the charmap can be specified and are ignored, as specified under item (1) above.
Note: The symbolic character notation is recommended for use of specifying all characters in
a FDCC-set, to facilitate portability of the FDCC-sets, as the coded character set of the application of the
FDCC-set may be different from the coded character set of the FDCC-set source. This is also
recommended for format effectors in strings, such as in LC_DATE or LC_ADDRESS, where the format
effectors are allowed to be stored together with the rest of the string, in a binary string with a different
encoding from that of the source FDCC-set.
4.1.2 Continuation of lines
A line in a specification can be continued by placing an escape character as the last visible
graphic character on the line; this continuation character is discarded from the input. The
line is continued to the next non-comment line.
4.1.3 Names for copy keyword
In most of the categories a "copy" keyword is allowed. The name specified with this copy
keyword is one of:
- "i18n" which indicate the "i18n" FDCC-set defined in this specification,
- the name of a FDCC-set or POSIX locale registered by the process defined in ISO/IEC
15897,
- any other name which may be recognized in some local context - not being
recommended as an international specification.
4.1.4 Pre-category statements
In a FDCC-set the following statements can precede category specifications, and they
apply to all categories in the specified FDCC-set.
4.1.4.1 comment_char
The following line in a FDCC-set modifies the comment character. It has the following
syntax, starting in column 1:
"comment_char %c\n",
10 © ISO/IEC 2004 - All rights reserved

The comment character defaults to the number-sign (#). All examples in this Technical
Report use "%" as the , except where otherwise noted. Blank lines
and lines containing the in the first position are ignored. In collating
statements a occurring where the delimiter ";" may occur, terminates
the collating statement.
4.1.4.2 escape_char
The following line in a FDCC-set modifies the escape character to be used in the text. It
has the following syntax, starting in column 1:
"escape_char %c\n",
The escape character is used for representing characters in 4.1.1 and for continuing lines.
The escape character defaults to backslash "\". All examples in this Technical Report uses
"/" as the escape character, except where otherwise noted.
4.1.4.3 repertoiremap
The following line in a FDCC-set specifies the name of a repertoiremap used to define the
symbolic character names in the FDCC-set. There may be at most one "repertoiremap"
line. It has the following syntax, starting in column 1:
"repertoiremap %s\n",
The name is one of:
- "i18nrep" which indicates the "i18nrep" repertoiremap defined in this specification,
- the name of a registered by the process defined in ISO/IEC 15897,
- any other name which may be recognized in some local context - not being
recommended as an international specification.
4.1.4.4 charmap
The following line in a FDCC-set specifies the name of a charmap which may be used
with the FDCC-set. It has the following syntax, starting in column 1:
"charmap %s\n",
This keyword gives a hint on which charmaps a FDCC-set is meant to be supported by.
There may be more than one charmap specification useful with a FDCC-set. It is an
application’s responsibility to decide what charmap specification is to be used with that
application.
The name is one of:
- the name of a registered by the process defined in ISO/IEC 15897,
- any other name which may be recognized in some local context - not being
recommended as an international specification.
© ISO/IEC 2004 - All rights reserved 11

4.2 LC_IDENTIFICATION
The LC_IDENTIFICATION category defines properties of the FDCC-set, and which
specification methods the FDCC-set is conforming to. Values must be supplied for all
unless otherwise noted, and the operands are strings. The following keywords are defined:
title Title of the FDCC-set.
source Organization name of provider of the source.
address Organization postal address.
contact Name of contact person. This keyword is optional.
email Electronic mail address of the organization, or contact person.
This keyword is optional.
tel Telephone number for the organization, in international
format. This keyword is optional.
fax Fax number for the organization, in international format. This
keyword is optional.
language Natural language to which the FDCC-set applies, as specified
in ISO 639. If a two-letter code exists for this language, it is
used, else the three-letter code is used. This keyword is
optional.
territory The geographic extent where the FDCC-set applies (where
applicable), as two-letter form of ISO 3166. This keyword is
optional.
audience If not for general use, an indication of the intended user
audience. This keyword is optional.
application If for use of a special application, a description of the
application. This keyword is optional.
abbreviation Short name for provider of the source. This keyword is
optional.
revision Revision number consisting of digits and zero or more full
stops (".").
date Revision date in the format according to this example: "1995-
02-05" meaning the 5th of February, 1995.
If required information is not present in ISO 639 or ISO 3166, the string should be given
as empty, and the relevant Maintenance Authority should be approached to get the needed
item registered.
Note: Only one language per territory can be addressed with a single FDCC-set; an additional FDCC-set
is required for each additional language for that territory.
category Is used to define that a category is present and what
specification the category is claiming conformance to. The
first operand is a string in double-quotes that describes the
specification that the category is claiming conformance to,
and the following values are defined:
"i18n:2004"
"posix:1993"
The second operand is a string with the category name, where
12 © ISO/IEC 2004 - All rights reserved

the category names of clause 4 are defined. More than one
"category" keyword may be given, but only one per category
name.
The "i18n" LC_IDENTIFICATION category is:
LC_IDENTIFICATION
% This is the ISO/IEC TR 14652 "i18n" definition for
% the LC_IDENTIFICATION category.
%
title "ISO/IEC TR 14652 i18n FDCC-set"
source "ISO/IEC Copyright Office"
address "Case postale 56, CH-1211 Geneve 20, Switzerland"
contact ""
email ""
tel ""
fax ""
language ""
territory ""
revision "1.0"
date "2001-12-08"
%
category "i18n:2004";LC_IDENTIFICATION
category "i18n:2004";LC_CTYPE
category "i18n:2004";LC_COLLATE
category "i18n:2004";LC_TIME
category "i18n:2004";LC_NUMERIC
category "i18n:2004";LC_MONETARY
category "i18n:2004";LC_MESSAGES
category "i18n:2004";LC_NAME
category "i18n:2004";LC_ADDRESS
category "i18n:2004";LC_TELEPHONE
END LC_IDENTIFICATION
4.3 LC_CTYPE (controversial)
The LC_CTYPE category defines character classification, case conversion, character
transformation, and other character attribute mappings. Support for the portable character
set is required.
A series of characters in a specification can be represented by the hexadecimal symbolic
ellipsis symbol "." (two dots), the decimal symbolic ellipses symbols "." (4 dots), or the
absolute ellipses "." (3 dots).
The hexadecimal symbolic ellipsis (".") specification is only valid between symbolic
character names. The symbolic names consists of zero or more nonnumeric characters from
the set shown with visible glyphs in Table 1 of clause 3.2.3, followed by an integer formed
by one or more hexadecimal digits, using uppercase letters only for the range "A" to "F".
The characters preceding the hexadecimal integer are identical in the two symbolic names,
and the integer formed by the hexadecimal digits in the second symbolic name are
identical to or greater than the integer formed by the hexadecimal digits in the first name.
This is interpreted as a series of symbolic names formed from the common part and each
of the integers in hexadecimal format using uppercase letters only between the first and the
second integer, inclusive, and with a length of the symbolic names generated that is equal
to the length of the first (and also the second) symbolic name. As an example,
. is interpreted as the symbolic names , , ,
and , in that order.
© ISO/IEC 2004 - All rights reserved 13

The decimal symbolic ellipsis (".") specification is only valid between symbolic
character names. The symbolic names consist of zero or more nonnumeric characters from
the set shown with visible glyphs in Table 1 of clause 3.2.3, followed by an integer formed
by one or more decimal digits. The characters preceding the decimal integer are identical
in the two symbolic names, and the integer formed by the decimal digits in the second
symbolic name is identical to or greater than the integer formed by the decimal digits in
the first name. This is interpreted as a series of symbolic names formed from the common
part and each of the integers in decimal format between the first and the second integer,
inclusive, and with a length of the symbolic names generated that is equal to the length of
the first (and also the second) symbolic name. As an example, . is
interpreted as the symbolic names , , , and , in that order.
The absolute ellipsis specification is only valid within a single encoded character set. An
ellipsis is interpreted as including in the list all characters with an encoded value higher
than the encoded value of the character preceding the ellipsis and lower than the encoded
value of the character following the ellipsis. The absolute ellipsis specification is
deprecated, as this is only relevant to FDCC-sets not using symbolic characters.
As an example, \x30;.;\x39 includes in the character class all characters with encoded
values between the endpoints.
4.3.1 Character classification keywords
The following keywords are recognized. In the descriptions, the term "automatically
included" means that it is not an error to either include the referenced characters or to omit
them; the interpreting system provides them if missing and accept them silently if present.
copy Specify the name of an existing FDCC-set to be used as the source for the
definition of this category. If this keyword is specified, no other keyword is
specified.
upper Define characters to be classified as uppercase letters. No character specified
for the keywords "cntrl", "digit", "punct", or "space" is specified. The
uppercase letters A through Z of the portable character set, automatically
belong to this class, with application-defined character values. The keyword
may be omitted.
lower Define characters to be classified as lowercase letters. No character specified
for the keywords "cntrl", "digit", "punct", or "space" is specified. The
lowercase letters a through z of the portable character set, automatically
belong to this class, with application-defined character values. The keyword
may be omitted.
alpha Define characters to be classified as used to spell out the words for natural
languages; such as letters, syllabic or ideographic characters. No character
specified for the keywords "cntrl", "digit", "punct", or "space" is specified.
In addition, characters classified as either "upper" or "lower" automatically
belong to this class. The keyword may be omitted.
digit Define the characters to be classified as decimal digits. Digits corresponding
to the values 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 can be specified in groups of 10
digits, and in ascending order of the values they represent. The digits of the
portable character set are automatically included. If this keyword is not
specified, the digits 0 through 9 of the portable character set automatically
14 © ISO/IEC 2004 - All rights reserved

belong to this class, with application-defined character values. The "digit"
keyword is used to specify which characters are accepted as digits in input
to an application, such as characters typed in or scanned in from an input
text file, and should list digits used with all the scripts supported by the
FDCC-set. The keyword may be omitted.
alnum Define the characters to be classified as used to spell out the words for
natural languages, and numeric digits. The characters of the "alpha" and
"digit" classes are automatically included in this class. The keyword may be
omitted.
outdigit Define the characters to be classified as decimal digits for output from an
application, such as to a printer or a display or a output text file. Decimal
digits corresponding to the values <0>, <1>, <2>, <3>, <4>, <5>, <6>, <7>,
<8>, and <9> can be specified, and in ascending order of the values they
represent. The intended use is for all places where decimal digits are used
for output, including numeric and monetary formatting, and date and time
formatting. Only one set of 10 decimal digits may be specified. If this
keyword is not specified, the decimal digits 0 through 9 of the portable
character set automatically belong to this class, with application-defined
character values. The keyword may be omitted.
blank Define characters to be classified as "blank" characters. If this keyword is
unspecified, the characters and , with application-defined
character values, belong to this character class.
space Define characters to be classified as white-space characters, to find
syntactical boundaries. No character specified for the keywords "upper",
"lower", "alpha", "digit", "graph", or "xdigit" is specified. If this keyword is
not specified, the characters , , , return>, , and , automatically belong to this class, with
application-defined character values. Any characters included in the class
"blank" are automatically included. The class should not include the NO-
BREAK spaces characters , , , as these
characters should not be used for word boundaries. The keyword may be
omitted.
cntrl Define characters to be classified as control characters. No character
specified for the keywords "upper", "lower", "alpha", "digit", "punct",
"graph", "print", or "xdigit" is specified. The keyword is specified.
punct Define characters to be classified as punctuation characters. No character
specified for the keywords "upper", "lower", "alpha", "digit", "cntrl",
"xdigit", or as the character is specified. The keyword
...

P LATIN CAPITAL LETTER P
Q LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Q
R LATIN CAPITAL LETTER R
S LATIN CAPITAL LETTER S
T LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T
U LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U
V LATIN CAPITAL LETTER V
W LATIN CAPITAL LETTER W
X LATIN CAPITAL LETTER X
Y LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Y
Z LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z
[ LEFT SQUARE BRACKET
\ REVERSE SOLIDUS
\ REVERSE SOLIDUS
] RIGHT SQUARE BRACKET
© ISO/IEC 2004 - All rights reserved 5

^ CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT
^ CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT
_ LOW LINE
_ LOW LINE
‘ GRAVE ACCENT
a LATIN SMALL LETTER A
b LATIN SMALL LETTER B
c LATIN SMALL LETTER C
d LATIN SMALL LETTER D
e LATIN SMALL LETTER E
f LATIN SMALL LETTER F
g LATIN SMALL LETTER G
h LATIN SMALL LETTER H
I LATIN SMALL LETTER I
j LATIN SMALL LETTER J
k LATIN SMALL LETTER K
l LATIN SMALL LETTER L
m LATIN SMALL LETTER M
n LATIN SMALL LETTER N
o LATIN SMALL LETTER O