Where Are We?

Custom cultures in the .NET Framework represent a great leap forward and open new and exciting possibilities to developers. The new cultures are recognized by the .NET Framework as first-class citizens and, once registered, are as valid as any other culture. With this feature, we can replace existing cultures, create new cultures for previously unknown cultures or cultures that are recognized on only certain operating systems, make new language/region combinations, and support customer-specific dialects. The custom culture implementation is not without its limitations, however, and care should be taken to avoid Custom Culture Hell. Effort is required to extend the custom culture architecture, and, not unreasonably, there is no support for language packs for custom cultures. That said, the only remaining limitation is our imagination.