Can this country info code be ported to Win32?

[Egbert Zijlema]

Guys and Dolls,

Windows does not always give the correct format for a short date.
DOS did, as far as I remember. My question is: can Windows read the information in the Dos file COUNTRY.SYS?
In other words, can the following code be ported to the Win32 platform?

'                   Source code: PowerBASIC for DOS
'
'           Author: [email protected]
' Copyright status: Public Domain
' FUNCTIONs to get country code and
'         country specific delimiters for date, time and numbers

$COMPILE EXE
' -----------------------------------------------------------------------
' CountryInfo - returns a string with the following information:
' First byte (= string's ASCII) is either 0, 1 or 2
'     0: date format = mdy (American)
'     1: date format = dmy (European)
'     2: date format = ymd (Asian or Japanese)

' Char  8: country specific decimal point
' Char 10:                  thousand separator
' Char 12:                  date separator
' Char 14:                  time separator

FUNCTION CountryInfo AS STRING
  buffer$ = SPACE$(64)                             ' prepare buffer
  REG 8, STRSEG(buffer$)                           ' DS = segment
  REG 4, STRPTR(buffer$)                           ' DX = offset
  REG 1, &H3800                                    ' AX = service
  CALL INTERRUPT &H21
  FUNCTION = buffer$                               ' buffer filled
END FUNCTION

' main
CLS
  buff$ = CountryInfo
  code% = REG(2)
  formt% = ASC(buff$)
  dd$ = MID$(buff$, 12, 1)
  pbDate$ = DATE$
  REPLACE "-" WITH dd$ IN pbDate$
  PRINT "Your country code is: "; TRIM$(STR$(code%))
  PRINT "The date delimiter in your country is: "; CHR$(34, 32); dd$; CHR$(32, 34)
  SELECT CASE formt%
    CASE 0
      PRINT "Date format is: MM DD YYYY"
    CASE 1
      PRINT "Date format is: DD MM YYYY"
      pbDate$ = MID$(pbDate$, 4, 3) + LEFT$(pbDate$, 3) + MID$(pbDate$, 7)
    CASE 2
      PRINT "Date format is: YYYY MM DD"
      pbDate$ = MID$(pbDate$, 7) + dd$ + LEFT$(pbDate$, 3) + MID$(pbDate$, 4, 2)
  END SELECT
  PRINT "So a short date in Windows should look like this: "; pbDate$
END

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[Lance Edmonds]

how about using the getdateformat() api? possibly with the aide of the enumdateformats() api?

1 year ago (almost to the day), you took part in a discussion on this very topic in http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pb...ead.php?t=2462

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lance
powerbasic support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</a>

[Egbert Zijlema]

Originally posted by Lance Edmonds:
How about using the GetDateFormat() API?

Lance,

As I said, Windows does not always return the correct short date.
Therefore this is what I'm doing now:
1. run my Dos app and save the result to a file
2. start my Win app, read the file and set the short date format according to what DOS reported.

If there is a possibility to perform task #1 under Windows, then I can simply add a few code lines to my Win app.
Furthermore: the DOS app only returns correct results when the country code is set appropriately in config.sys, a file that is highly neglected by Windows users.



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[Semen Matusovski]

Egbert --
> As I said, Windows does not always return the correct short date.

If Windows returns another result that you want to see, this doesn't mean "incorrect".
For example, for russian language Win2000 offers 5 formats.
Four from them are actually used dd.MM.yyyy dd.mm.yy dd/mm/yy d.m.yy
One (yyyy-MM-dd) is really strange.

Without lpformat Windows selects a format according Regional settings.
If to use lpformat, you can be independent at all.

> Country.sys

DOS settings are indepent of Windows settings and can conflict.

Example: Toshiba notebooks, which you can buy in Russia, have pre-installed English Windows release.
Owners typically change settings in config.sys only (to russian).
This allows normally work with DOS programs in full screen mode.
Meanwhile Regional settings typically remains English (anyway will be incorrect code page for console programs in "window" mode).
Interesting which settings is possible to name correct for Windows programs ?

You ask, is it possible to execute Int 21h in 32-bit program.
Actually it's very interesting question.
Guess, that Windows uses undocumented API functions to switch real - protected mode.
I think so, because there are different types of processors and a code should be enough long.
It's not simple changing of PE bit in cr0 register.

[This message has been edited by Semen Matusovski (edited July 17, 2001).]

[Tom Hanlin]

In what way does Windows not return the correct format for a short date?

I doubt that COUNTRY.SYS has any relevance to Windows. You might check into
Windows internationalization functions such as GetSystemDefaultLCID.


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Tom Hanlin
PowerBASIC Staff

[Egbert Zijlema]

Originally posted by Tom Hanlin:
In what way does Windows not return the correct format for a short date?

Maybe, Tom, it's merely a matter of what one expects after so many years of DOS-programming.
Anyhow, with Regional Settings set to "Dutch (standard)" Windows95 returns "dd-mm-yy" (2 figures for year), while my above DOS code returns "dd-mm-yyyy".
The format returned by DOS is correct in my opinion. As far as I can test, German settings also return a different short date than DOS used to return (Thomas Gohel, if you read this message, please enlighten me).
Note that Regional Settings in Control Panel may be modified by the user. The settings for DOS, loaded from COUNTRY.SYS by CONFIG.SYS are system settings and thus no subject of change.

Whatever, wrong or just different, I like my short dates being displayed the way DOS displays file dates when executing the DIR command.

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[Tom Hanlin]

Seems like this is a Windows configuration issue, not actually a bug of any sort.
The best solution, then, may be to change your "short date" setting in your Windows
configuration.

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Tom Hanlin
PowerBASIC Staff

[Egbert Zijlema]

Tom,

That's not the issue. On my own computer I did change the short date format already. Of course!
The point is, that my program also will run on other computers (I hope).
What I want to achieve is that the application retrieves and displays short dates as 'prescribed' bij DOS.
Is that possible? In other words, is there a trick to call INT 21 from within Windows32.
Semen Matusovski calls it an interesting challenge to figure that out.

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[Stuart McLachlan]

Originally posted by Egbert Zijlema:
What I want to achieve is that the application retrieves and displays short dates as 'prescribed' bij DOS.

As an end user, *I want* Windows applications to honour the way I have configured my machine to display dates.
Surely, that is the whole point of Windows "Regional Settings" and GetDateFormat().

(Unless of course, you are putting dates into log files/lists etc and need to be able to sort them. Then it is quite acceptable to force them to display as YYYY-MM-DD or whatever)



[This message has been edited by Stuart McLachlan (edited July 17, 2001).]

[Peter Redei]

I am not sure I understood the problem. I think Windows returns the correct date/time regardless the local settings and allows you to format it as you want.
Consider this code as a sample to prove that:

$COMPILE EXE
$INCLUDE "WIN32API.INC"
FUNCTION PBMAIN()
LOCAL st AS SYSTEMTIME
LOCAL t AS ASCIIZ * 64
LOCAL d AS ASCIIZ * 64
GetLocalTime st
GetDateFormat %LOCALE_SYSTEM_DEFAULT, %LOCALE_NOUSEROVERRIDE, st, BYVAL %NULL, d, 64
GetTimeFormat %LOCALE_SYSTEM_DEFAULT, %LOCALE_NOUSEROVERRIDE, st, BYVAL %NULL, t, 64
MSGBOX "Using local settings: " & d & " " & t & $CRLF & _
"Formatted per your wish: " & FORMAT$(st.wMonth, "00") & " " & FORMAT$(st.wDay, "00") & " " & FORMAT$(st.wYear) & " " & FORMAT$(st.wHour, "00") & ":" & FORMAT$(st.wMinute, "00") & ":" & FORMAT$(st.wSecond, "00"), _
%MB_OK, "The time ON this machine"
END FUNCTION

Regards,

Peter Redei

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[Egbert Zijlema]

Okay folks,

Forget the DOS-routine. Initially use Power Basic's DATE$ for the short date format, but find its format and separator using the Windows API GetLocaleInfo.
Just posted my code to the Source Code Forum.

Thanks to everyone participating in this discussion.
And maybe, Semen will come with a Windows routine for calling INT 21h?

Regards,

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[This message has been edited by Egbert Zijlema (edited July 18, 2001).]

[Tom Hanlin]

I'm not sure your users will thank you for forcing your own date preferences on them,
but that's your decision to make.

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Tom Hanlin
PowerBASIC Staff

[Lance Edmonds]

I've not spent a lot of time looking into this, but the code in the Source Code forum reports my Local Date format as MM/DD/YY, but my locale settings should make it show as DD/MM/YY.

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Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

[Egbert Zijlema]

Originally posted by Tom Hanlin:
I'm not sure your users will thank you for forcing your own date preferences on them,
but that's your decision to make.

Tom,
I'm not forcing anyone. My application, whatever it is, does not modify settings. Only when it displays calendar dates, it uses this format.


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[Egbert Zijlema]

egb

Originally posted by Lance Edmonds:
I've not spent a lot of time looking into this, but the code in the Source Code forum reports my Local Date format as MM/DD/YY, but my locale settings should make it show as DD/MM/YY.

Lance,

That looks impossible to me. My source only rebuilds Power Basic's DATE$, which is "mm-dd-yyyy" initially.
It may shuffle month, day and year, even alter the separator, but not the length of the string.


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[Lance Edmonds]

The length is the same.... it is just the MM and DD elements which are reversed.

When I have some time, I'll try to look into it.

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Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>