On 2011-06-13 10:48, dreamon wrote: > As I understand it, until a while ago, when selecting a certain language > at login through GDM, this would change all language-related variables > (i.e. $LANG and all $LC_* variables), which means that the display > language as well as regional formats were altered. The change you > (@Gunnar) have introduced only changes the display language and leaves > regional formats unchanged, so you can run an US English language- > session of Ubuntu which displays date, time and currency values in the > Swedish format, for example. You have achieved this by setting the > $LANGUAGE and $LC_MESSAGES variables to the selected language, but > leaving the other $LC_* variables unchanged, which thus retain the > setting from gnome-language-selector -> Text.
Yep, that's pretty much correct. But please note that the changes started in Lucid, where the UI of gnome-language-selector was changed to basically its current design. My contribution has been to complete the changes along those lines. > Hence, setting $LANGUAGE and $LC_MESSAGES on a per-programme basis > allows a user to run programmes in a different language, e.g. > env LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8 firefox > env LANGUAGE=en gedit > If I understand correctly, env LANG used to work on earlier Ubuntu > versions because $LANGUAGE still wasn't being used then. Well, if you used language-selector to set the language in Lucid or Maverick, LANGUAGE was set. Just env LANG still worked for applications that don't recognize LANGUAGE. > While changes you have applied appear logical to me, I am wondering if > this is in line with how most applications handle language settings? > What I mean is, are you sure all programmes either use $LANGUAGE or > $LC_MESSAGES to determine their display language? No. Or, more precisely, I'm sure that not all programs do, which is also mentioned at ghelp:language-selector#caveats > Are there applications > which look at other variables, e.g. $LANG, to determine their display > language? Are such problems to be expected on the user's side? Yes. OTOH, while there are some significant applications such as Firefox, Thunderbird and LibreOffice that don't recognize LANGUAGE, they do use LC_MESSAGES. So far I have not noticed any application of real significance that only checks LANG. Even if the world isn't perfect, we'd better make the best of it, right? ;-) > Ironically, both commands you suggested above (env LANGUAGE and env > LC_MESSAGES) also work for me now. Not sure if I did anything wrong > before, but it seems this bug report is invalid. I'll track this issue > for a few more days and, if no illogical behaviour appears again, mark > the bug as invalid. Glad to hear that you made it work at last. Thanks! -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/792735 Title: Language selection at login overrides language selection via env LANG To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gdm/+bug/792735/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
