Re: gdm2 string freeze breakage

[Keld Jørn Simonsen <keld dkuug dk>]

On Sat, Mar 06, 2004 at 01:24:23PM +0100, Ole Laursen wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Christian Rose <menthos@gnome.org> writes:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > This string addition appears to be supposed to add an "en_DK" language
> > to the language list, which would seem nonsensic to most people, as
> > there simply is no large English-speaking population minority in
> > Denmark, and English isn't an official language of Denmark either. The
> > only official language in Denmark is Danish. Thus, adding en_DK as a
> > language makes as little sense as adding any other random combination of
> > any language and territory.
> >
> > Also, we don't have any en_DK translations in GNOME, and given the above
> > situation, there's very little probability we will ever have such.
> 
> I don't think the change was right, but the reason it was added is
> probably that some (technical) Danish people here in Denmark want
> their interface to speak English, but otherwise use Danish paper
> formats, decimal point etc.
> 
> Don't ask me why - I think it is completely silly and nonsensical. But
> that's the way it is.

Well, I am responsible for the en_DK locale (I wrote it and it is/was
included it the ISO POSIX standard.

The political reason was that English is the company language in a
number of Danish firms. So even if you use English as the internal
company language, then with the en_DK locale you can get the other
danish settings, such as paper size.

The unofficial reason is that this was a way to produce a locale that
can be used as the standard - for other locales to build on. And this is
how many locales then was written (they were also written by me).
Basically the en_DK locale is better suited to build other locales, 
especially the sorting, where building on a Danish locale (which was the
alternative for the ISO POSIX standard) is peculiar, with our special
ordering of æøå and ü and ö and ä and such.

In TR 14652 it is replaced by the i18n locale.

Best regards
Keld