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| 101 PC How Tos | |
| April 2000• Vol.6 Issue 4 | |
How To...Use Regional Settings |
Jump to first occurrence of:
[REGIONAL]
[SETTINGS]
[RICH]
[GRAY]
 What You Need To Know
Benefits You can manage regional differences on your computer, so wherever you are, your computer is quickly and easily at home Time Five to 10 minutes Skill Level Easy Computing is global, but language and the way numbers are displayed are not. Users in Moscow speak Russian; users in Great Britain use commas instead of decimal points; and users in Germany precede the month with the day in dates. So many regions, so many standards, and the Regional Settings Properties dialog box keeps track of them all. Windows 98 and Windows NT have Regional Settings for many countries, and the Regional Settings Properties dialog box lets you manage settings for Numbers, Currency, Time, and Dates and, in WinNT, Input Locales. Go to Regional Settings by clicking Start, selecting Settings, clicking Control Panel, and double-clicking Regional Settings. Regional Settings. When you open the program, it defaults to the Regional Settings tab. In addition to a map, this tab has one function: to set your system language. In instances where your language is spoken in more than one country, you’ll have several options. For example, for English, you may choose one of six countries. Number. The second tab lets you change how Windows displays numbers. At the top you’ll see Appearance Samples, text boxes that show you how numbers look with the current settings. There are a number of options: • Decimal Symbol: Determines what symbol separates the whole from the fraction (as in 3.46). • No. Of Digits After Decimal: Sets the number of digits to the right of the decimal (as in 3.46). • Digit Grouping Symbol: Determines which symbol to use for groups of digits in larger numbers (as in the comma in 14,000). • Negative Sign Symbol: Sets which symbol indicates negative numbers (as in –3.46). • Negative Number Format: Determines where the negative symbol appears (as in –3.46). • Display Leading Zeroes: Sets whether a zero appears before the decimal (as in 0.15). • Measurement System: Determines whether you use U.S. or metric system. • List Separator: Sets which character is used to separate items in a list. Currency. The Currency tab is similar to the Number tab, but here you determine how Windows displays currency. First you get an Appearance Samples section, followed by options that you can tinker with; in this section, Windows uses a Universal currency symbol to illustrate examples. • Currency Symbol: Sets the currency symbol according to the country (United States, $). • Position Of Currency Symbol: Establishes where the currency symbol appears in relation to the amount (as in $3.46). • Negative Number Format: Sets how to display negative currency. (In the United States, this is usually done by placing the number in parentheses, as in ($3.46).) • Decimal Symbol: See Number setting above. • No. Of Digits After Decimal: See Number setting. • Digit Grouping Symbol: See Number setting. • Number Of Digits In Group: Sets the digit groupings (as in $1,000,000). Time. The fourth tab determines how Windows displays time. The first field you’ll see is the Time Sample, which shows how time is displayed (2:13:19PM, for example). The Time Style box has a drop-down menu with several choices; you can also make up your own. Below this, the Time Separator lets you select the symbol to separate hours, minutes, and seconds. The last two fields let you select what symbols you want to use to represent a.m. (the hours before noon) and p.m. (the hours after noon). Date. The calendar system is linked to Regional Settings. While other regions may use different calendar types, most use the Gregorian calendar. This should be noted in the grayed-out Calendar Type field. Below here, you can tell the computer how to interpret two-digit years. This lets you select a 100-year span that the computer will assume two-digit years fall within. The rest of the Date tab deals with the form that Short (1/10/00) and Long (Monday, Jan. 10, 2000) Dates assume. You can format them and view the changes in the corresponding fields. Input Locales. Input Locales is present in WinNT but not Win98. This option, which is the same as the Input Locales tab in the Keyboard Properties dialog box, lets you install additional keyboard input languages and layouts.  by Rich Gray
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