Re: language per user

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Sat, Jan 03, 2004 at 12:28:12PM -0700 or thereabouts, Justin Findlay wrote:
> Does anyone listening to this list know how to specify the language on a
> user basis in GNOME?  I have looked through all the preferences and system
> settings menus and found a GUI which only can set the system-wide
> language.  The add a new user GUI has no widget to set the user's
> language, because it only updates /etc/passwd, right?, which has nothing
> to do with language.  Unfortunately, I know of no other system files
> having to do with users, yet.  (Are there any?)  I entirely believe it
> possible, but so far to me it is just some unlocatable, random line buried
> in the gconf XML gibberish somewhere.

This may be distro-dependent, actually. 

Are you using GDM? If so, the user can specify the language as
they login. I don't use GDM so I forget quite where it is, but
it's somewhere obvious. And each user can specify it separately.
That is your best bet.

If you want to edit all users' languages, then yes, the system-wide
one is what you want (be sure that whoever has root understands 
the language though!). And on a per-user basis, there will be a
"dotfile" in the user's home directory. Well, no. You can _make_
such a file: if the user is using the default locale there is 
no need for it to be present. 

I used to put everything like this in .bash_profile and .bashrc
(because I always forget which does what :)). I still set the
sort order (which I don't want to be in any language order, I
want to be in "classic" C order, with capital letters coming
before lower-case) there. But for language.. well. I'd use that,
except if you're on Red Hat or Fedora. 

On (recent) Red Hat and Fedora, the default locale for the system 
is in /etc/sysconfig/i18n and the corresponding user one is in
~/.i18n, following the usual pattern of "default in /etc and a 
dotfile in user's home directory which will override it if it
exists". Here's mine: 

$ cat /etc/sysconfig/i18n
LANG="cy_GB.UTF-8"
SUPPORTED="cy_GB.UTF-8:en_GB.UTF-8:en_GB:en:en_US.UTF-8:en_US:en"
SYSFONT="LatArCyrHeb-16"
$ cat .i18n
LANG="cy_GB.UTF-8"
$

I do not know at all how portable this is across Linux distros,
let alone BSD and Solaris. 

These files don't affect just Gnome. They affect everything.
So "date" will return results in the appropriate language too.

Telsa