aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/chapter07/locale.xml
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorKrejzi <krejzi@linuxfromscratch.org>2013-02-15 21:14:37 +0000
committerKrejzi <krejzi@linuxfromscratch.org>2013-02-15 21:14:37 +0000
commitf3317d4d6ec0c92c07e5f670882081ab518b5e39 (patch)
treee6fa4d79a690df7e88d357e09c9b42dcf0afff5a /chapter07/locale.xml
parent4a4e0178687f1411081dc2eadf547a77bb4b397e (diff)
Move Chapter 7 in place for Systemd.
git-svn-id: http://svn.linuxfromscratch.org/LFS/branches/systemd/BOOK@10159 4aa44e1e-78dd-0310-a6d2-fbcd4c07a689
Diffstat (limited to 'chapter07/locale.xml')
-rw-r--r--chapter07/locale.xml135
1 files changed, 135 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/chapter07/locale.xml b/chapter07/locale.xml
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..f4c7443dc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/chapter07/locale.xml
@@ -0,0 +1,135 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
+<!DOCTYPE sect1 PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
+ "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd" [
+ <!ENTITY % general-entities SYSTEM "../general.ent">
+ %general-entities;
+]>
+
+<sect1 id="ch-scripts-locale">
+ <?dbhtml filename="locale.html"?>
+
+ <title>Configuring the System Locale</title>
+
+ <indexterm zone="ch-scripts-locale">
+ <primary sortas="e-etc-locale-conf">/etc/locale.conf</primary>
+ </indexterm>
+
+ <para>The <filename>/etc/locale.conf</filename> below sets some
+ environment variables necessary for native language support. Setting
+ them properly results in:</para>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>The output of programs translated into the native language</para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>Correct classification of characters into letters, digits and other
+ classes. This is necessary for <command>bash</command> to properly accept
+ non-ASCII characters in command lines in non-English locales</para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>The correct alphabetical sorting order for the country</para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>Appropriate default paper size</para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>Correct formatting of monetary, time, and date values</para>
+ </listitem>
+ </itemizedlist>
+
+ <para>Replace <replaceable>&lt;ll&gt;</replaceable> below with the two-letter code
+ for the desired language (e.g., <quote>en</quote>) and
+ <replaceable>&lt;CC&gt;</replaceable> with the two-letter code for the appropriate
+ country (e.g., <quote>GB</quote>). <replaceable>&lt;charmap&gt;</replaceable> should
+ be replaced with the canonical charmap for your chosen locale. Optional
+ modifiers such as <quote>@euro</quote> may also be present.</para>
+
+ <para>The list of all locales supported by Glibc can be obtained by running
+ the following command:</para>
+
+<screen role="nodump"><userinput>locale -a</userinput></screen>
+
+ <para>Charmaps can have a number of aliases, e.g., <quote>ISO-8859-1</quote>
+ is also referred to as <quote>iso8859-1</quote> and <quote>iso88591</quote>.
+ Some applications cannot handle the various synonyms correctly (e.g., require
+ that <quote>UTF-8</quote> is written as <quote>UTF-8</quote>, not
+ <quote>utf8</quote>), so it is safest in most
+ cases to choose the canonical name for a particular locale. To determine
+ the canonical name, run the following command, where <replaceable>&lt;locale
+ name&gt;</replaceable> is the output given by <command>locale -a</command> for
+ your preferred locale (<quote>en_GB.iso88591</quote> in our example).</para>
+
+<screen role="nodump"><userinput>LC_ALL=<replaceable>&lt;locale name&gt;</replaceable> locale charmap</userinput></screen>
+
+ <para>For the <quote>en_GB.iso88591</quote> locale, the above command
+ will print:</para>
+
+<screen><computeroutput>ISO-8859-1</computeroutput></screen>
+
+ <para>This results in a final locale setting of <quote>en_GB.ISO-8859-1</quote>.
+ It is important that the locale found using the heuristic above is tested prior
+ to it being added to the Bash startup files:</para>
+
+<screen role="nodump"><userinput>LC_ALL=&lt;locale name&gt; locale language
+LC_ALL=&lt;locale name&gt; locale charmap
+LC_ALL=&lt;locale name&gt; locale int_curr_symbol
+LC_ALL=&lt;locale name&gt; locale int_prefix</userinput></screen>
+
+ <para>The above commands should print the language name, the character
+ encoding used by the locale, the local currency, and the prefix to dial
+ before the telephone number in order to get into the country. If any of the
+ commands above fail with a message similar to the one shown below, this means
+ that your locale was either not installed in Chapter 6 or is not supported by
+ the default installation of Glibc.</para>
+
+<screen><computeroutput>locale: Cannot set LC_* to default locale: No such file or directory</computeroutput></screen>
+
+ <para>If this happens, you should either install the desired locale using the
+ <command>localedef</command> command, or consider choosing a different locale.
+ Further instructions assume that there are no such error messages from
+ Glibc.</para>
+
+ <!-- FIXME: the xlib example will became obsolete real soon -->
+ <para>Some packages beyond LFS may also lack support for your chosen locale. One
+ example is the X library (part of the X Window System), which outputs the
+ following error message if the locale does not exactly match one of the character
+ map names in its internal files:</para>
+
+<screen><computeroutput>Warning: locale not supported by Xlib, locale set to C</computeroutput></screen>
+
+ <para>In several cases Xlib expects that the character map will be listed in
+ uppercase notation with canonical dashes. For instance, "ISO-8859-1" rather
+ than "iso88591". It is also possible to find an appropriate specification by
+ removing the charmap part of the locale specification. This can be checked
+ by running the <command>locale charmap</command> command in both locales.
+ For example, one would have to change "de_DE.ISO-8859-15@euro" to
+ "de_DE@euro" in order to get this locale recognized by Xlib.</para>
+
+ <para>Other packages can also function incorrectly (but may not necessarily
+ display any error messages) if the locale name does not meet their expectations.
+ In those cases, investigating how other Linux distributions support your locale
+ might provide some useful information.</para>
+
+ <para>Once the proper locale settings have been determined, create the
+ <filename>/etc/locale.conf</filename> file:</para>
+
+<screen><userinput>cat &gt; /etc/locale.conf &lt;&lt; "EOF"
+<literal>LANG=<replaceable>&lt;ll&gt;_&lt;CC&gt;.&lt;charmap&gt;&lt;@modifiers&gt;</replaceable></literal>
+EOF</userinput></screen>
+
+ <para>The <quote>C</quote> (default) and <quote>en_US</quote> (the recommended
+ one for United States English users) locales are different. <quote>C</quote>
+ uses the US-ASCII 7-bit character set, and treats bytes with the high bit set
+ as invalid characters. That's why, e.g., the <command>ls</command> command
+ substitutes them with question marks in that locale. Also, an attempt to send
+ mail with such characters from Mutt or Pine results in non-RFC-conforming
+ messages being sent (the charset in the outgoing mail is indicated as <quote>unknown
+ 8-bit</quote>). So you can use the <quote>C</quote> locale only if you are sure that
+ you will never need 8-bit characters.</para>
+
+ <para>UTF-8 based locales are not supported well by many programs.
+ Work is in progress to document and, if possible, fix such problems, see
+ <ulink url="&blfs-root;view/svn/introduction/locale-issues.html"/>.</para>
+
+</sect1>