Is it possible to change the decimal separator style on the fly?

I can think of three ways to do this, although they'd all be somewhat painful.

One is to create a variable for your decimal separator and just update the contents each time to match the output needed. Here your issue is that you have to insert the variable each time you type a number with decimals in it.

The second is to put both the period and the comma in to separate your decimals and put a conditional tag on each, then set your conditions before generating your output.

The third is a variation of the second, except that you'd type the same number twice, once with the period and once with the comma, and then apply the conditions to the full number instead of just the separator.

In the first two cases, if you're typing a lot of numbers with decimals in them in one place (such as in a table), you can insert the separators the first time, then copy and paste as you go. 

Note that this means using a decimal tab is going to be problematic, if not outright impossible.

I don't know enough about DITA to know if it's possible to use attributes to change between a period and a comma.

Hi,

When you use structured FrameMaker, you might do this with attributes (although I do not know how).

Otherwise a translator should handle this.

Or you can change this with regular expressions.

There are numerous suggestions when you search the internet for regular expressions with decimal dot.

I would suggest this:

Search (\d+)\.(\d+)

Replace $1,$2

This replaces the dot with a comma.

Comma -> dot:

Search (\d+),(\d+)

Replace $1.$2

Explanation: \d is a digit. + means one or more. When I want to search for a . I must put a \ before it. The brackets mean that this content can be referenced in the Replace field with a $ and a number. All is explained in the FrameMaker help. And there are numerous web-sites about regular expressions. Just try it out.

This regular expression does not check for numbers like this: 1a3.456. It would still find 3.456.

And when you have similar numbers, e.g. order codes like 123.4567, then this expression will find this as well.

Therefore I recommend to really test this and to be very careful to click Change all! Always make a backup!

Best regards

Winfried