Language, exact field contents?

[larshp]

masterLanguage is part of multiple files, and it is defined as 2 characters

but what is considered correct, and what is wrong?

In SAP all user formatted languages are 2 characters upper case, but looking at something like ISO its 2 character lower case

Suggest to make an explicit enum list of allowed values

[larshp]

still relevant, https://github.com/SAP/abap-file-formats/blob/main/file-formats/intf/examples/zif_aff_example.intf.json#L5

[larshp]

suggest following ISO standards

[larshp]

it's only possible for SAP to implement this issue, as the code for JSON generation is proprietary

[larshp]

I see this issue as an easy low hanging fruit, impacting all files in the project => ie. it should be high priority IMHO

[schneidermic0]

As mentioned above all conversions in ABAP produce 2 characters upper case (e.g. ISOLA conversion exits or transformations):

• https://help.sap.com/doc/abapdocu_cp_index_htm/CLOUD/en-US/abenst_option_format.htm?file=abenst_option_format.htm#!ABAP_ADDITION_1@1@
• https://help.sap.com/doc/abapdocu_cp_index_htm/CLOUD/en-US/abenabap_xslt_asxml_schema.htm

I think I would prefer using ISO 639-1 using small characters.

However, I would like to check with the team how we can convert this fast in simple transformations.

[schneidermic0]

We took this topic up. Unfortunately, it turned out, that ABAP uses always upper-case language codes.

• If we use the format option in transformations format language will be formatted as upper-case see https://help.sap.com/doc/abapdocu_latest_index_htm/latest/en-US/index.htm
• Even SAP's conversion exists for language fields (like the system language) convert the language to upper case. see function modules CONVERSION_EXITISOLA* or CONVERT_SAP_LANG_TO_ISO_LANG

Both accept lower case iso codes as input (in our case deserialisation) but produce uppercase codes as output (in our case during serialisation).

Even if I personally would prefer small characters for language codes, I think we should stick to the representation ABAP uses in other places, too.

If no one disagrees, we should specify this in our repository documentation.

[larshp]

suggest following ISO standards

[schneidermic0]

Within the last weeks, we reiterated this topic (once more) and reached out to some more colleagues. They also suggested to use ISO-standard if the language is also used outside of ABAP systems.

Since I mentioned some ABAP functionality to do language conversions in ABAP systems. For the conversion to ISO language codes they suggested to use class CL_I18N_LANGUAGES.

We planned to take this up in our current iteration (see #280)

[larshp]

class CL_I18N_LANGUAGES is not released, I'd expect SAP to have released stuff to convert between internal format and ISO codes

[schneidermic0]

class CL_I18N_LANGUAGES is not released, I'd expect SAP to have released stuff to convert between internal format and ISO codes

I have sent your feedback to the colleagues responsible.

[larshp]

I've looked through https://abapedia.org/steampunk-2111-api/ but did not find anything similar

[schneidermic0]

I've looked through https://abapedia.org/steampunk-2111-api/ but did not find anything similar

Yes, there is nothing, currently. As mentioned above I sent the feedback to my colleagues. They've added it as request to their backlog.

[schneidermic0]

I think we can close this issue. If I miss anything feel free to reopen it.