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LOCALE_SCONSOLEFALLBACKNAME

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Windows Vista and later: Preferred locale to use for console display. The maximum number of characters allowed for this string is 85, including a terminating null character.

Note

In general, applications should not make direct use of LOCALE_SCONSOLEFALLBACKNAME data. To determine what language resources to use in a console window, an application should call either SetThreadUILanguage or SetThreadPreferredUILanguages. These functions use the console fallback data as a factor in choosing a language that is legible in the console, but it is not the sole determinant. In particular, the console is limited to displaying characters from a single code page. For example, el-GR for Greek (Greece) is a valid console language, but if the current console code page is Latin-1 (code page 1252) the console displays Greek text mostly as a series of character-not-found symbols.

 

If the language corresponding to this locale is supported in the console, the value is the same as that for LOCALE_SNAME, that is, the locale itself can be used for console display. However, the console cannot display languages that can be rendered only with Uniscribe. For example, the console cannot display Arabic or the various Indic languages. Therefore, the LOCALE_SCONSOLEFALLBACKNAME value for locales corresponding to these languages is different from the value for LOCALE_SNAME.

For predefined locales, if the fallback value is different from the value for the locale itself, the value for the neutral locale is used. A specific locale is associated with both a language and a country/region, while a neutral locale is associated with a language but is not associated with any country/region. For example, ar-SA falls back to "en", not to "en-US". This policy of using neutral locales is implemented consistently for predefined locales and is strongly recommended for custom locales. However, the policy is not enforced. For a custom locale, your application can use a specific locale instead of a neutral locale as a fallback.

Note

None of the functions described in Calling the "Locale Name" Functions accept neutral locales as inputs. Thus LOCALE_SCONSOLEFALLBACKNAME data is of very limited use. In particular, neither GetLocaleInfo nor GetLocaleInfoEx accepts neutral locales as inputs.