source: BOOK/system-config/common/locale.xml@ 70a2865

clfs-3.0.0-systemd clfs-3.0.0-sysvinit systemd sysvinit
Last change on this file since 70a2865 was 24b004c, checked in by Chris Staub <chris@…>, 11 years ago

Remove end-of-line spaces

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[73e1db21]1<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
2<!DOCTYPE sect1 PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
3 "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd" [
4 <!ENTITY % general-entities SYSTEM "../../general.ent">
5 %general-entities;
6]>
7
8<sect1 id="ch-scripts-locale">
9 <title>Setting Up Locale Information</title>
10 <?dbhtml filename="locale.html"?>
11
12 <indexterm zone="ch-scripts-locale">
[2164942]13 <primary sortas="e-/etc/locale.conf">/etc/locale.conf</primary>
[73e1db21]14 </indexterm>
15
[6365b5d]16 <para>The <filename>/etc/locale.conf</filename> below sets some environment
17 variables necessary for native language support. Setting them properly
18 results in:</para>
[73e1db21]19
20 <itemizedlist>
21 <listitem>
22 <para>The output of programs translated into the native language</para>
23 </listitem>
24 <listitem>
[6365b5d]25 <para>Correct classification of characters into letters, digits and other
26 classes. This is necessary for <command>bash</command> to properly accept
27 non-ASCII characters in command lines in non-English locales</para>
[73e1db21]28 </listitem>
29 <listitem>
30 <para>The correct alphabetical sorting order for the country</para>
31 </listitem>
32 <listitem>
33 <para>Appropriate default paper size</para>
34 </listitem>
35 <listitem>
36 <para>Correct formatting of monetary, time, and date values</para>
37 </listitem>
38 </itemizedlist>
39
40 <para>Replace <replaceable>[ll]</replaceable> below with the
41 two-letter code for the desired language (e.g., <quote>en</quote>) and
42 <replaceable>[CC]</replaceable> with the two-letter code for the
[2164942]43 appropriate country (e.g., <quote>GB</quote> or <quote>US</quote>).
[73e1db21]44 <replaceable>[charmap]</replaceable> should be replaced with the
[6365b5d]45 canonical charmap for your chosen locale. Optional modifiers such as
46 <quote>@euro</quote> may also be present.</para>
[73e1db21]47
48 <para>The list of all locales supported by Glibc can be obtained by running
49 the following command:</para>
50
51<screen role="nodump"><userinput>locale -a</userinput></screen>
52
53 <para>Locales can have a number of synonyms, e.g. <quote>ISO-8859-1</quote>
54 is also referred to as <quote>iso8859-1</quote> and <quote>iso88591</quote>.
55 Some applications cannot handle the various synonyms correctly, so it is
56 safest to choose the canonical name for a particular locale. To determine
57 the canonical name, run the following command, where <replaceable>[locale
58 name]</replaceable> is the output given by <command>locale -a</command> for
59 your preferred locale (<quote>en_US.utf8</quote> in our example).</para>
60
61<screen role="nodump"><userinput>LC_ALL=<replaceable>[locale name]</replaceable> locale charmap</userinput></screen>
62
63 <para>For the <quote>en_US.utf8</quote> locale, the above command
64 will print:</para>
65
66<screen><computeroutput>UTF-8</computeroutput></screen>
67
68 <para>This results in a final locale setting of <quote>en_US.UTF-8</quote>.
[6365b5d]69 It is important that the locale found using the heuristic above is tested
70 prior to it being added to <filename>/etc/locale.conf</filename>:</para>
[73e1db21]71
[24b004c]72<screen role="nodump"><userinput>LC_ALL=[locale name] locale territory
[73e1db21]73LC_ALL=[locale name] locale language
74LC_ALL=[locale name] locale charmap
75LC_ALL=[locale name] locale int_curr_symbol
76LC_ALL=[locale name] locale int_prefix</userinput></screen>
77
78 <para>The above commands should print the language name, the character
79 encoding used by the locale, the local currency, and the prefix to dial
80 before the telephone number in order to get into the country. If any of the
81 commands above fail with a message similar to the one shown below, this means
82 that your locale was either not installed in Chapter 10 or is not supported by
83 the default installation of Glibc.</para>
84
85<screen><computeroutput>locale: Cannot set LC_* to default locale: No such file or directory</computeroutput></screen>
86
87 <para>If this happens, you should either install the desired locale using
88 the <command>localedef</command> command, or consider choosing a different
89 locale. Further instructions assume that there are no such error messages
90 from Glibc.</para>
91
92 <para>Some packages beyond CLFS may also lack support for your chosen locale.
93 One example is the X library (part of the X Window System), which outputs
94 the following error message:</para>
95
96<screen><computeroutput>Warning: locale not supported by Xlib, locale set to C</computeroutput></screen>
97
98 <para>Sometimes it is possible to fix this by removing the charmap part of
99 the locale specification, as long as that does not change the character map
100 that Glibc associates with the locale (this can be checked by running the
101 <command>locale charmap</command> command in both locales). For example,
102 one would have to change &quot;de_DE.ISO-8859-15@euro&quot; to
103 &quot;de_DE@euro&quot; in order to get this locale recognized by Xlib.</para>
104
105 <para>Other packages can also function incorrectly (but may not necessarily
[6365b5d]106 display any error messages) if the locale name does not meet their
107 expectations. In those cases, investigating how other Linux distributions
108 support your locale might provide some useful information.</para>
[73e1db21]109
110 <para>Once the proper locale settings have been determined, create the
[2164942]111 <filename>/etc/locale.conf</filename> file:</para>
[73e1db21]112
[2164942]113<screen><userinput>cat &gt; /etc/locale.conf &lt;&lt; "EOF"
114<literal># Begin /etc/locale.conf
[73e1db21]115
[6365b5d]116LANG=<replaceable>[ll]</replaceable>_<replaceable>[CC]</replaceable>.<replaceable>[charmap]</replaceable><replaceable>[@modifiers]</replaceable>
[73e1db21]117
[2164942]118# End /etc/locale.conf</literal>
[73e1db21]119EOF</userinput></screen>
120
[6365b5d]121 <para>Note that you can modify <filename>/etc/locale.conf</filename> with
122 Systemd <command>localectl</command> utility. To use
123 <command>localectl</command> for the example above, run:</para>
124
125<screen role="nodump"><userinput>localectl set-locale LANG="<replaceable>[ll]_[CC][charmap][@modifiers]</replaceable>"</userinput></screen>
126
127 <para>You can also specify other language specific environment variables such
128 as <envar>LANG</envar>, <envar>LC_CTYPE</envar>, <envar>LC_NUMERIC</envar> or
129 any other environment variable from <command>locale</command> output. Just
[68a8a9f]130 separate them with a space. An example where <envar>LANG</envar> is set as
[6365b5d]131 en_US.UTF-8 but <envar>LC_CTYPE</envar> is set as just en_US is:</para>
132
133<screen role="nodump"><userinput>localectl set-locale LANG="en_US.UTF-8" LC_CTYPE="en_US"</userinput></screen>
134
135 <note><para>Please note that <command>localectl</command> command can
136 be used only on a system booted with Systemd.</para></note>
[73e1db21]137 <para>Setting the keyboard layout, screen font, and locale-related
138 environment variables are the only internationalization steps needed to
139 support locales that use ordinary single-byte encodings and left-to-right
[9c06d27e]140 writing direction. UTF-8 has been tested on the English, French, German,
[73e1db21]141 Italian, and Spanish locales. All other locales are untested. If you discover
[9c06d27e]142 issues with any other locale please open a ticket in our Trac system.</para>
[73e1db21]143
[9c06d27e]144 <para>Some locales need additional programs and support. CLFS will not be
145 supporting these locales in the book. We welcome the support for these other
146 locales via <ulink url="&cblfs-root;"/>.</para>
[73e1db21]147
148</sect1>
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