[language] display language and the regional formats separately

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

Caveat: I'm not (yet) a phone user, so this bug report is based on observations when testing u-s-s on the trusty desktop.

In "Language & Text", the list of display language options presented seems not to be optimal. I have German installed, and the list includes three German options: Deutch, Schweizer Hochdeutch, and Österreichisches Deutch. However, there is only one German translation available, and whichever of those three options you select, LANGUAGE is assigned "de" or "de_DE" and LANG is assigned "de_DE.UTF-8".

I noticed that the language options list was recently addressed via bug #1234236.

On the desktop, the script /usr/share/language-tools/language-options (provided by accountsservice) is used for the purpose. It outputs a list of language codes representing the installed translations, no more and no less.

Possibly it would be a good idea to consider using that script also in u-s-s.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report and suggestion, that seems a good idea indeed!

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Iain Lane suggested on IRC that I build u-s-s from the trunk, so I did (up to revision 489). When testing with that build, the list of display language options was far longer, with many irrelevant items (including the German items mentioned above). :(

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

I was informed on IRC that the Display language sheet currently is intended to set both the display language and the regional formats, while this bug report was written under the assumption that they were to be set separately.

Please note that my suggestion above only applies if it's decided to change the interface so display language and formats are set separately.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Sorry I didn't see this bug report until now.

When I designed it, I did not intend the "Display language" screen "to set both the display language and the regional formats". It was just implemented that way because there was nowhere else to set the regional formats (see also bug 1392699).

The problem is that it's hard to find the item you want. That might be fixed by separating out the lists completely, or it might be fixed by having expandable items for each language, or it might be implemented by showing fewer locales altogether, or a combination of those, or something else. So I'm marking this as a duplicate of bug 1350275, since it does not assume a particular solution.