Wiki entry on locale

[Jerry3904]

I was writing a HELP file for the MX System locales, and realized that we had no entry for locale. I drafted one, but would really like a careful review.

https://mxlinux.org/wiki/locale/

Nobody seems to pay attention to these requests lately (I have posted 2 without response), but I can't do everything myself...

[Head_on_a_Stick]

You have a typo:

Alternativelym you can open a terminal and enter the command

Extra m at the end of "Alternatively".

Looks good otherwise but I use Debian rather than MX so I may have missed something.

Perhaps you could also link (or copy from) the Debian wiki page:

https://wiki.debian.org/Locale

[Jerry3904]

Thanks. I looked at the Debian page, but will look again.

[Eadwine Rose]

MIght want to add that it also asks you to input your default locale, at least the sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales one does IIRC.

[fehlix]

I was writing a HELP file for the MX System locales, and realized that we had no entry for locale. I drafted one, but would really like a careful review.
https://mxlinux.org/wiki/locale/

Will review ... over the weekend ...

[Jerry3904]

Great, thanks. What's there is just a first and minimal draft.

[dreamer]

My understanding: A "locale" is (at least) two settings in one.
1. UI language
2. Regional settings (country, date format, currency, 12/24 hour clock)

For example Skype and SeaMonkey don't respect time format so if locale is English-US will always display 12 hour clock (can be seen as bugs).

There are tools that can deal with this for example language-selector-gnome which was never ported to Debian. I think Mint has something similar called mint-locale.

https://screenshots.debian.net/package/ ... ctor-gnome

Code: Select all

sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

does not remove anything even if you uncheck locales. Bleachbit can remove unused language packs.

I don't think a user should be confronted with the word "locale" because it's not a thing in the real world and I don't understand why someone thought it was a good idea to invent "locale" as a substitute for two different settings.

language-selector-gnome isn't perfect, in fact I find it slightly annoying, but it does its job and normal people don't have to know anything about "locales" which is a big win for Ubuntu and Mint. This should be in Debian. Maybe we can crowdfund someone to port it to Debian?

[fehlix]

My understanding: A "locale" is (at least) two settings in one.
1. UI language
2. Regional settings (country, date format, currency, 12/24 hour clock)

that's roughly it.
With release of MX18, we had introduced a locale- (language) selector within the login menu (upper right corner) in addition to the already existing keyboard selector.
So with this ability to set the locale at login (which I think is also sticky (?) ),
the need for setting the system locale is drastically redcuced.
Most user don't need those system wide setting of locale.
Might be there are still some tools running as root, which do not pass-over the user sessions locale,
for those it appears system locale is still needed, But this could be fixed with the starter of the tools itself.

Code: Select all

sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

does not remove anything even if you uncheck locales. Bleachbit can remove unused language packs.

The point was not the removal of locale, but to set either system wide, or reduce the number of "complied" locales.
Lot's of other distro simply do not have locale-selector at login, hence they need to give a user a way to set the system locale.
A tools like gnome-locale or mint-locale are nice, OTOH I guess most MX user would not need to use those tools any way,
given that they have session locale set at login.
.. ok, application wise some languge-package update automatism for e.g. libre-office, firefox, thunderbird etc
would still be a nice enhancement compared to the current manually selection within MXPI...
...

[dreamer]

.. ok, application wise some languge-package update automatism for e.g. libre-office, firefox, thunderbird etc
would still be a nice enhancement compared to the current manually selection within MXPI...
...

I think the localization support in MXPI works pretty well. The point I was trying to make is that language-selector-gnome makes a clear distinction between

1. Language
2. Regional Formats

It doesn't expose users to "locales", because that's a weird concept. Many people in the US only speak Spanish and many people in Europe don't speak the language where they live so what "locale" are they supposed to choose? (rhetoric question)

Anyway this is an academic discussion. If it works in practice then it's all good. I haven't tried the latest MX iso. I hope the language selector that you introduced on the LightDM screen is a language selector and not a locale selector... because it's not like you are teleported to a different place just by choosing a different language...