With a browser, how do I know which decimal separator does the client use?
- by Quassnoi
I'm developing a web application.
I need to display some decimal data correctly so that it can be copied and pasted into a certain GUI application that is not under my control.
The GUI application is locale sensitive and it accepts only the correct decimal separator which is set in the system.
I can guess the decimal separator from Accept-Language and the guess will be correct in 95% cases, but sometimes it fails.
Is there any way to do it on server side (preferably, so that I can collect statistics), or on client side?
Update:
The whole point of the task is doing it automatically.
In fact, this webapp is a kind of online interface to a legacy GUI which helps to fill the forms correctly.
The kind of users that use it mostly have no idea on what a decimal separator is.
The Accept-Language solution is implemented and works, but I'd like to improve it.
Update2:
I need to retrive a very specific setting: decimal separator set in Control Panel / Regional and Language Options / Regional Options / Customize.
I deal with four kinds of operating systems:
Russian Windows with a comma as a DS (80%).
English Windows with a period as a DS (15%).
Russian Windows with a period as a DS to make poorly written English applications work (4%).
English Windows with a comma as a DS to make poorly written Russian applications work (1%).
All 100% of clients are in Russia and the legacy application deals with Russian goverment-issued forms, so asking for a country will yield 100% of Russian Federation, and GeoIP will yield 80% of Russian Federation and 20% of other, incorrect answers.
