Locale

In computing, a locale is a set of parameters that defines the user's language, region and any special variant preferences that the user wants to see in their user interface. Usually a locale identifier consists of at least a language identifier and a region identifier.

On POSIX platforms such as Unix, Linux and others, locale identifiers are defined by ISO 15897, which is similar to the BCP 47 definition of language tags, but the locale variant modifier is defined differently, and the character set is included as a part of the identifier. It is defined in this format: [language[_territory][.codeset][@modifier]]. (For example, Australian English using the UTF-8 encoding is en_AU.UTF-8.)

General locale settings

These settings usually include the following display (output) format settings:

The locale settings are about formatting output given a locale. So, the timezone information and daylight saving time are not usually part of the locale settings. Less usual is the input format setting, which is mostly defined on a per application basis.

Locale ('Ndrangheta)

A locale (translated as "local" or "place"), is the main local organizational unit of the 'Ndrangheta with jurisdiction over criminal activities in an entire town or an area in a large urban center.

A locale is usually made up by one 'ndrina (in the case of a small town) or several 'ndrine, if more than one 'ndrina operates in the same town. In the case of larger cities a local may rule over a certain area or neighbourhood of the city. In some contexts a 'ndrina is more powerful than the locale on which they formally depend.

Each locale has a boss with authority over members' life and death, a capo locale, usually the capobastone of a 'ndrina. It has at least 49 members and besides the capo locale, there is the contabile (accountant) who handles the finances - commonly called la bacinella or la valigetta (briefcase) - and a crimine that oversees the illegal activity. All three form a triumvirate called the Copiata. A locale is often subdivided into two divisions: the società minore (the "minor" or lower society) and the società maggiore ("major" or higher society). The minor is submissive to the major.

Locale (computer hardware)

In computer architecture a locale is an abstraction of the concept of a localized set of hardware resources which are close enough to enjoy uniform memory access.

For instance, on a computer cluster each node may be considered a locale given that there is one instance of the operating system and uniform access to memory for processes running on that node. Similarly, on an SMP system, each node may be defined as a locale. Parallel programming languages such as Chapel have specific constructs for declaring locales.

See also

References