Locale settings not saved

[Laurent Bigonville]

Hi,

I cannot save locales using gnome-control-center with gnome-shell.

all my locales are listed (french locales) by default it select fr_FR but I want fr_BE, closing g-c-c and reopening it reset to fr_FR.

Also I cannot apply system wide locales using g-c-c

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Hi Laurent,

Thanks for your effort to improve Ubuntu by reporting this observation.

On 2011-08-31 15:36, Laurent Bigonville wrote:
> I cannot save locales using gnome-control-center with gnome-shell.
>
> all my locales are listed (french locales) by default it select fr_FR
> but I want fr_BE, closing g-c-c and reopening it reset to fr_FR.

g-c-c is gradually changing in this respect. Based on your description I assume
- that you used the "Region and Language" widget, and
- that it is the display _language_ you tried to set.

In that case I can't help asking why you want the language setting fr_BE. The reason why it's exchanged for fr_FR before being saved is that there is no Belgian translation into French available. On an updated Oneiric system "Language Support" has replaced "Region and Language", and there you won't find fr_BE in the list of languages to choose from, but only options that represent available translations.

> Also I cannot apply system wide locales using g-c-c

That works with "Language Support".

Please let us know whether these explanations are sufficient.

[Laurent Bigonville (bigon)]

Hi,

Well this is quite confusing for the user, it shouldn't reject the change like that explicitly, or hide the entries it cannot use.

Also how can we set the LC_* evn variables properly, all my machine have fr_BE except my oneiric one that have some set to fr_BE and some to fr_FR

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

No reason to talk more about the rejection, as you put it, since it was just a temporary state in the development Oneiric.

But how is it confusing to the user to "hide" entries it cannot use? Wouldn't it be much more confusing to present to the user several language options that do not really exist?

On an updated Oneiric there is typically only one French language option: "French". When selected, two things happen:

1. The list of languages in the LANGUAGE environment variable is updated in ~/.profile.

2. The locale fr_FR.UTF-8 is used to set LC_MESSAGES, LC_CTYPE and LC_COLLATE in ~/.profile. The reason why the French country code is choosen is simply that France is the main country where French is spoken.

May I suggest that you click the "Help" button in the Language Support window and review the help document. It describes how languages and locales are dealt with.

[Laurent Bigonville (bigon)]

> No reason to talk more about the rejection, as you put it, since it was just a temporary state in the development Oneiric.

Indeed "Language Support" is now started instead of the "Region and Language" widget

>But how is it confusing to the user to "hide" entries it cannot use? Wouldn't it be much more confusing to present to the user several language options that do not really exist?

I meant it should either hide the entries or warn that the user that the locale cannot be used. But this is the case in "Language Support".

> 2. The locale fr_FR.UTF-8 is used to set LC_MESSAGES, LC_CTYPE and LC_COLLATE in ~/.profile. The reason why the French country code is choosen is simply that France is the main country where French is spoken.

I've the feeling that this assumption will annoy lot of people...

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Well, if you like, you can trick Ubuntu to believe that there is a Belgium specific French translation by creating an empty directory:

sudo mkdir /usr/share/locale/fr_BE

That results in both "French (France)" and "French (Belgium)" appearing as language options. It does not make much sense of course, as long as only one French translation exists, but possibly you can be popular in some Belgium Ubuntu forum by passing on the tip. ;-)

[Laurent Bigonville (bigon)]

Well there is already a dropdown menu where you can specify "French (Belgium)" "French (Canada)"...

Why is this value not used to set the all the locales to that value?

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Because that dropdown list is used to set other things but the language, such as date/time format, currency, default paper size... It has been considered important to provide a UI that clearly distinguishes between the display language and regional formats.

Even if the language is the same, I take for granted that "French (Canada)" differs from "French (France)" in several regional formats aspects. You know better than I do as regards "French (Belgium)", but Ubuntu assumes that the existence of a separate locale means that there is something that differs. Hence all the available locales are displayed on the regional formats list.

HTH

[Jean-Louis Dupond (dupondje)]

I really think it should be possible to select nl_BE in the list.

Now you can add 'Nederlands (Belgie)', but after a restart it gets removed from the interface.
This is really something we do not want here.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

@Jean-Louis
There are two lists: one for selecting language, and one for setting regional formats, and it seems as if you mix them up. In the list for regional formats, nl_ BE is present both before and after any restart. As regards language, there is no Belgian variant of the Dutch translation, so only 'nl' is present in the language list.

How would it make sense to show a Belgian option when there is no Belgian translation into Dutch?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

doesn't seem to be a control center bug

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for language-selector (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]