Definition: (from Wikipedia) Locale is a set of parameters that defines the user's language, country 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.
While the .charset part seems to work properly under Unix, it seems that is not working under Win32 (at least from PHP), and strings returned from some PHP functions aren't in the charset specified but in some sort of default charset. Let's call it localewincharset. This forces us to convert from this charset to the current_charset() being used by the user.
Some people have attempted digital surgery to install a needed Mac locale, by copying an existing locale into a new file. You should really edit the newly copied file in order to make the changes needed from the source file in order to adapt to your real local settings (like currency). See this site and this one and this one too.
Note: Some locales for windows in red could be incorrect (technically or geographically but they are the only way I've found to show dates properly in my XP box). Also some other coloured cells must be revised because they are not working.
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