[Python-Dev] Re: proposal: add basic time type to the standard library

[Tim Peters]

[Guido]
> ...
> Another thing to consider is that for most apps, the choice of the
> date/time format should be taken out of the hands of the programmer
> and placed into the hands of the user, through some kind of preference
> setting.  I18n and L10n also strongly suggests to take this route.

I'm sure nobody wants to admit this <wink>, but in sheer numbers, nobody has
more experience with this stuff than Microsoft.  If you sit at your Windows
box and go to Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Regional Settings,
you'll get a tabbed dialog for specifying the format of number, currency,
time, and date displays.  A Windows app that ignores the settings here is
considered to be broken (and rightly so).

Idiosyncratic formats for user-visible number/currency/date/time info is
going to become an increasingly Bad Idea on other OSes too.