Re: language list

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

László Kovács wrote:
> I am trying to implement a similar language list mechanism as in
> gnome-libs/gnome_i18n_get_language_list(). This is about querying
> LC_ALL, LC_MESSAGES and LANG in this order, in fact setlocale() does
> this all for me. My problem is that although this is implemented in
> gnome-libs() Linux does not seem to like language lists in these
> variables. I tried to set some lists, but my setlocale() call still
> returns C, although the environment variables are set to the list. I
> dont know what am I doing wrong. On the other hand on Solaris setting
> these variables to a language list is illegal, it can be set to one
> locale only and only to one of those that are installed.

I *beleive* this is the same for Linux. I have never seen a system with
a language list in the LC or LANG variables myself, and it wouldn't
surprise me if it isn't supported. But I don't know for sure. The glibc
manual (http://www.gnu.org/manual/glibc/html_mono/libc.html#SEC111)
mentions that language (locale) lists should be possible in the LANGUAGE
variable though:

	"When developing the message translation functions it was felt
	that the functionality provided by the variables above is not
	sufficient. For example, it should be possible to specify more
	than one locale name. Take a Swedish user who better speaks
	German than English, and a program whose messages are output
	in English by default. It should be possible to specify that
	the first choice of language is Swedish, the second German,
	and if this also fails to use English. This is possible with
	the variable LANGUAGE. For further description of this GNU
	extension see section User influence on gettext
	(http://www.gnu.org/manual/glibc/html_mono/libc.html#SEC137)."



Christian