scope:

This International Standard specifies the information that can appear in a Cultural Specification and defines the procedures for registering such specifications. The Cultural Specifications can include freeform Narrative Cultural Specifications and Repertoiremaps as described in this International Standard, POSIX Locales and Charmaps conforming to ISO/IEC/IEEE 9945, and other machine-parsable specifications such as FDCC-sets, Repertoiremaps and Charmaps following the recommendations of ISO/IEC TR 14652, and Cultural Specifications formatted using SGML or XML. The registry is in printed and electronic form.

Each cultural convention registration has unique identifiers in a particular standard format defined in this International Standard. A numeric identifier and a token identifier are assigned to each registered cultural convention specification, POSIX Locale, POSIX Charmap and Repertoiremap, FDCC-set and ISO/IEC TR 14652 Charmap, and other machine-processable descriptions of cultural conventions. These identifiers are for unique identification of the Cultural Specification, and are intended to be used with POSIX Locale handling mechanisms and possibly other Locale and Charmap usage, such as in programming languages, database handling and communication protocols and for identification and specification by human operators.

The field of application of this International Standard is to provide reference for implementers, procurers, users, and standardization organizations to determine cultural requirements in a given cultural environment. Registered items using certain POSIX formal specification methods can also be used by POSIX-conformant operating systems and other software capable of using such specifications.

NOTE The title of this International Standard contains the term "cultural elements". The preferred term in this International Standard is "cultural conventions", but the term "cultural elements" is retained in the title for consistency with earlier versions of this International Standard.