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<!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">
<title>Setting Up Locale Information</title>
<?dbhtml filename="locale.html"?>
<indexterm zone="ch-scripts-locale">
<primary sortas="e-/etc/profile">/etc/profile</primary>
</indexterm>
<para>The base <filename>/etc/profile</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>This script also sets the <envar>INPUTRC</envar> environment variable
that makes Bash and Readline use the <filename>/etc/inputrc</filename> file
created earlier.</para>
<para>Replace <replaceable>[ll]</replaceable> below with the
two-letter code for the desired language (e.g., <quote>en</quote>) and
<replaceable>[CC]</replaceable> with the two-letter code for the
appropriate country (e.g., <quote>GB</quote>).
<replaceable>[charmap]</replaceable> should be replaced with the
canonical charmap for your chosen locale.</para>
<para>The list of all locales supported by EGLIBC can be obtained by running
the following command:</para>
<screen role="nodump"><userinput>locale -a</userinput></screen>
<para>Locales can have a number of synonyms, 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, so it is
safest to choose the canonical name for a particular locale. To determine
the canonical name, run the following command, where <replaceable>[locale
name]</replaceable> is the output given by <command>locale -a</command> for
your preferred locale (<quote>en_US.utf8</quote> in our example).</para>
<screen role="nodump"><userinput>LC_ALL=<replaceable>[locale name]</replaceable> locale charmap</userinput></screen>
<para>For the <quote>en_US.utf8</quote> locale, the above command
will print:</para>
<screen><computeroutput>UTF-8</computeroutput></screen>
<para>This results in a final locale setting of <quote>en_US.UTF-8</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=[locale name] locale country
LC_ALL=[locale name] locale language
LC_ALL=[locale name] locale charmap
LC_ALL=[locale name] locale int_curr_symbol
LC_ALL=[locale name] 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 10 or is not supported by
the default installation of EGLIBC.</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 EGLIBC.</para>
<para>Some packages beyond CLFS 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:</para>
<screen><computeroutput>Warning: locale not supported by Xlib, locale set to C</computeroutput></screen>
<para>Sometimes it is possible to fix this by removing the charmap part of
the locale specification, as long as that does not change the character map
that EGLIBC associates with the locale (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/profile</filename> file:</para>
<screen><userinput>cat > ${CLFS}/etc/profile << "EOF"
<literal># Begin /etc/profile
export LANG=<replaceable>[ll]</replaceable>_<replaceable>[CC]</replaceable>.<replaceable>[charmap]</replaceable>
export INPUTRC=/etc/inputrc
# End /etc/profile</literal>
EOF</userinput></screen>
<para>Setting the keyboard layout, screen font, and locale-related
environment variables are the only internationalization steps needed to
support locales that use ordinary single-byte encodings and left-to-right
writing direction. UTF-8 has been tested on the English, French, German,
Italian, and Spanish locales. All other locales are untested. If you discover
issues with any other locale please open a ticket in our Trac system.</para>
<para>Some locales need additional programs and support. CLFS will not be
supporting these locales in the book. We welcome the support for these other
locales via <ulink url="&cblfs-root;"/>.</para>
</sect1>