#1 2017-02-28 16:00:41

andoo

Member

Registered: 2016-05-05

Posts: 10

changing locale while preserving system language

When I try to select English language with German locale in the bl graphical installer it complains that "There is no locale defined for the combination of language and country […]"
However I'm convinced that I previously had such a setup.

A web search turned up https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lo … f_the_week

@debian:~$ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

As I understand it I would now change all the variables except LANG

to one of the following from locale.gen (which one by the way?)

# de_DE ISO-8859-1
# de_DE.UTF-8 UTF-8
# de_DE@euro ISO-8859-15

The first problem however is that i can't seem to find etc/locale.conf (locale.gen is there)

Edit: the corresponding file seems to be etc/default/locale:

#  File generated by update-locale
LANG="en_US.UTF-8"

Is it safe to add to this file:

LC_CTYPE="de_DE ISO-8859-1"
LC_NUMERIC="de_DE ISO-8859-1"
LC_TIME="de_DE ISO-8859-1"
LC_COLLATE="de_DE ISO-8859-1"
LC_MONETARY="de_DE ISO-8859-1"
LC_MESSAGES="de_DE ISO-8859-1"
LC_PAPER="de_DE ISO-8859-1"
LC_NAME="de_DE ISO-8859-1"
LC_ADDRESS="de_DE ISO-8859-1"
LC_TELEPHONE="de_DE ISO-8859-1"
LC_MEASUREMENT="de_DE ISO-8859-1"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="de_DE ISO-8859-1"

?

Last edited by andoo (2017-03-01 18:48:46)

damo

....moderator....

Registered: 2015-08-20

Posts: 6,734

Re: changing locale while preserving system language

This is what my system has for /etc/default/locale

#  File generated by update-locale
LANG="en_GB.UTF-8"
LANGUAGE="en_GB:en"

Useful info here: http://www.shellhacks.com/en/HowTo-Chan … t-in-Linux

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andoo

Member

Registered: 2016-05-05

Posts: 10

Re: changing locale while preserving system language

Yes I considered just using British locale, which I guess would help with having the week start on Monday for example, but I'm still hoping there is a tidier solution.

One problem with British locale is that it defines the dot "." as the decimal mark versus the comma "," in German.

damo

....moderator....

Registered: 2015-08-20

Posts: 6,734

Re: changing locale while preserving system language

I wasn't suggesting you used my locale, I was just showing what the file looks like with other entries. I guess you can add your suggestions - if it works then no problem.

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andoo

Member

Registered: 2016-05-05

Posts: 10

Re: changing locale while preserving system language

Thank you.

First for etc/default/locale I tried

#  File generated by update-locale
LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_CTYPE="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_NUMERIC="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_TIME="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_COLLATE="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_MONETARY="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_MESSAGES="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_PAPER="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_NAME="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_ADDRESS="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_TELEPHONE="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_MEASUREMENT="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="de_DE.iso88591"

which turned my system language to German for some reason.

What works is for etc/default/locale:

#  File generated by update-locale
LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
LANGUAGE="en_US:en"
LC_CTYPE="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_NUMERIC="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_TIME="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_COLLATE="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_MONETARY="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_MESSAGES="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_PAPER="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_NAME="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_ADDRESS="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_TELEPHONE="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_MEASUREMENT="de_DE.iso88591"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="de_DE.iso88591"

System language remains English this way. Libre office and icedove seem to respect these settings nicely. The system clock uses German time format as well as German names for months and days however, but this is in a way consistent I guess.

[Edit: seems to be necessary to set all the variables except LANGUAGE to "de_DE.iso88591" after all, or else libre office will revert to using US locale]

Last edited by andoo (2017-02-28 19:30:18)

Head_on_a_Stick

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From: London

Registered: 2015-09-29

Posts: 9,093

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Re: changing locale while preserving system language

I would strongly recommend using the UTF-8 option, if at all possible.

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andoo

Member

Registered: 2016-05-05

Posts: 10

Re: changing locale while preserving system language

I would strongly recommend using the UTF-8 option, if at all possible.

Thanks for the recommendation, is "de_DE.UTF-8" just as well, or is it preferable to leave it at "en_US.UTF-8"? https://wiki.debian.org/Locale suggests that:

You might want to use the default en_US locale because some software doesn't play nice when locale's set to something else, but you want to have the first day of the week set to Monday, not to Sunday, like it's defined in en_US. To get this desired behaviour you can add the following to /etc/default/locale:
LC_TIME="en_GB.UTF-8"

For my purposes this might be a way to go since libre office has itself an option to set the locale to German independent of the system locale.

Also I found this somewhat strange behavior that firefox translates all its extensions like NoScript to German if "LC_Messages" is set to "de_DE.UTF-8" even though firefox itself is English.

Last edited by andoo (2017-03-01 15:34:17)