For decimal numbers, obviously I want to localise everything. Whatever programming language I’m working in, there will tend to be tools for this, so it’s also easy to do.
In my application, I happen to be formatting numbers as hexadecimal quite often. This leads me to wonder:
- Are there locales which group hexadecimal numbers into different groupings to me?
- Are there locales which use a separator other than space for the groupings?
- Are A-F used as the extra six digits even in locales which don’t use a Latin script?
I guess in general – do I have to internationalise this, or does everyone in the world look at the same hexadecimal value and intrinsically understand it the same way?
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Generic answer: If the requirements are not clear, or unknown, you can approach this in two ways. The first is YAGNI, and don’t do it. The other is to plan ahead and create a locale for displaying Hex numbers, and only implement a single format.
In your case, given the target audience, I would spend a short (something over a second, less than a minute is about right) amount of time asking the product owner for requirements, and then apply YAGNI. The reason for asking is so you don;t get blamed for not implementing a requirement you did not know about, and have evidence you planned ahead.
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