Re: Digit grouping and minimumGroupingDigits

[Piotr Karocki]

Such grouping is also recommended by SI:

https://www.bipm.org/en/publications/si-brochure , 5.4.4, third paragraph.

Following the 9th CGPM (1948, Resolution 7) and the 22nd CGPM (2003,
Resolution 10), for numbers with many digits the digits may be divided into
groups of three by a space, in order to facilitate reading. Neither dots nor
commas are inserted in the spaces between groups of three. However, when
there are only four digits before or after the decimal marker, it is
customary not to use a space to isolate a single digit. The practice of
grouping digits in this way is a matter of choice; it is not always followed
in certain specialized applications such as engineering drawings, financial
statements and scripts to be read by a computer.

To be exact, since 1948 numbers may be divided in groups of three in order
to facilitate reading; neither dots nor commas are ever inserted in the
spaces between
groups. And in 2003 it was reaffirmed.

-----Original Message-----
From: 'Edward Welbourne' via CLDR Users Public Mail List
[mailto:cldr-...@unicode.org]
Sent: Friday, 04 August 2023 15:25
To: cldr-...@unicode.org
Subject: Digit grouping and minimumGroupingDigits

Hi all,

Some time ago I attempted to implement digit grouping according to
CLDR's data; in the course of that I interpreted minimumGroupingDigits
as the smallest size that the most-significant group could be, so that a
minimum grouping of 2 with a pattern grouping of 3 would not only write
one thousand as 1000 but also one million as 1000,000 (if separator is
comma), again omitting the separator for a leading group that would have
only one digit in it.

Prompted by a user bug-report, I'm now re-reading [0]

The minimumGroupingDigits can be used to suppress groupings below a
certain value. This is used for languages such as Polish, where one
would only write the grouping separator for values above 9999. The
minimumGroupingDigits contains the default for the locale.
* The attribute value is used by adding it to the grouping separator
value. If the input number has fewer integer digits, the grouping
separator is suppressed.

[0] just above
https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr35/tr35-63/tr35-numbers.html#Examples_of_minimumGroupingDigits

as meaning that grouping is suppressed for 1000 through 9999 but, after
that, digits are grouped in blocks of three even if this leaves the most
significant digit in a group of size one, so 1,234,567 rather than
1234,567 (as I'd previously supposed).

First I'd like to check: is my revised interpretation correct ? Or am I
misleading myself by misreading it ? If the latter, perhaps we can come
up with better wording. If the former, it would perhaps be better if
* the specification overtly said that, once there is one group, the most
significant group can be smaller than the minimumGroupingDigits size,
* the table linked above could also include entries for one million in
the pattern-grouping = 3 parts.

Eddy.

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