GraphExpert Professional 1.6.0 documentation
GraphExpert Professional localizes itself to the same region as the operating system you are running on by default; therefore you should see the appropriate treatment of decimal points (either a comma, or a dot) throughout the application. If you do not want this behavior, but want to operate in English only, uncheck the Use local region settings box and restart GraphExpert Professional.
GraphExpert Professional offers the ability, when it is reading/writing data to/from the clipboard or a file, to allow the user to specify what style of decimals to use for this, presuming that it differs from the default locale.
If you need to read files that use the dot-decimal notation most often, select “English” for File I/O numeric format; same comments apply for the clipboard format.
If you need to read files that use the comma-decimal notation most often, select “European” for “File I/O numeric format”; same comments apply for the clipboard format.
The Use local region settings checkbox is by default checked, and will cause the application to use your native language style for numerical formatting. This is the desired behavior in most situations. However, if you want to operate the software in English only mode (decimals will always be dots), deselect this checkbox. If you change this setting, you must restart GraphExpert Professional for the change to take effect.
The Edit->Preferences->Localization->File I/O numeric format choice allows you to override the application-wide locale setting for file input/output, to explicitly define the numeric format for reading and writing files. This affects the file import dialog as well as File->Export, With this setting, for example, users that utilize commas for decimals in GraphExpert Professional can choose to read and write files using dots for decimals. And vice versa.
Note
In the file import dialog (see Importing from file), there is still a chance to change the numeric format before reading the file. This setting simply sets the default numeric format in that dialog appropriately.
The Edit->Preferences->Localization->Clipboard I/O numeric format choice allows you to override the application-wide locale setting for clipboard input/output, to explicitly define the numeric format for copying and pasting. This affects the copy/paste in the spreadsheet, as well as copying numeric data out any window that might offer it. With this setting, for example, users that utilize commas for decimals in GraphExpert Professional can choose to copy and paste data to/from the clipboard using dots for decimals. And vice versa.
In the file import dialog (File->Open), there is a switch to explicitly pick the numerical formatting (English or European style) before reading the file. This gives the user the opportunity, on a file-by-file basis, to specify the numerical format. See Importing from file.
If your file contains the following within the first ten lines of the file:
#DataFileProperties: locale=EN
or:
#DataFileProperties: locale=EURO
this signals to the GraphExpert Professional file importing mechanism that the the file uses English or European numerical formatting (as appropriate), and the default there (see Importing from file) will be set appropriately. The user may still override the default, however, but in most cases this would be a bad idea, because the file itself is stating what the correct locale is.
So, you can use this capability in your own data files if you like. All of the sample data files shipped with GraphExpert Professional contain this line, so that the samples work straightforwardly regardless of the application’s current region settings. This small addition to a text datafile lets the file itself express its own numerical formatting.
GraphExpert Professional files (.gxp) are not affected by region settings; therefore, they are portable across localities as well as being portable across platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux).