Re: How to change locale

[Pablo Saratxaga <pablo mandrakesoft com>]

Kaixo!

On Thu, Mar 08, 2001 at 03:44:09PM -0800, Dan Mueth wrote:

> Also, I don't understand the difference between LANG and LANGUAGE.

LANG was probably the first thing that appeared, a lot of years ago.
It is only useful when it is the only one defined, as then other LC_*
get it value. Also, some old/bad programs still use it instead of
the correct way (Netscape is an example, it uses LANG to find the
localized X11 ressource files).

LANGUAGE variable has been introduced by GNU I think; it has two main
advantages:
* it allows to give a *list* of languages (that is very useful for portuguese
  speaking people for example, that can then benefit of pt and pt_BR
  translations)
* it only is relevant for text messages translations, it doesn't mess
  at all with locale config in fact (that allows to set locale for a given
  language (that is, support to input and output in that language, sorting
  order, etc); yet have the messages in another.

> If I
> type 'locale' then LANG and all the LC_* variables show up but not
> LANGUAGE.

You need to do echo $LANGUAGE.
That being said, it may be a nice addition to GNU locale command to
display also LANGUAGE I think.

> And then there is the issue of LINGUAS which I believe you set at build

Yes, LINGUAS defines the languages to install when you compile and install a
program.

> Does anybody know of a document or web page which explains all this, or

The info page of GNU libc, in the gettext section, gives info about it.

-- 
Ki ça vos våye bén,
Pablo Saratxaga

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