Comment 102 for bug 553162

Hi again, Kevin.

Two things you need to be aware about:

1. The display language can be set on two levels: system wide,
which determines what's shown on the login screen, and user specific.
It's only the user language that can be set from the login screen.

2. The principal tool for setting language is Language Support. The
language chooser on the login screen is just a supplement.

I have recently written a help document, which shows up if you click the
"Help" button in Language Support. Your latest comment triggered me to
make some changes to the document, but they are currently queued since
we are in BetaFreeze (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BetaFreeze). You can still
reach those very latest changes by installing language-selector from my
PPA: https://launchpad.net/~gunnarhj/+archive/i18n-docs

I recommend you to study the document carefully, to get a better
understanding of how languages are handled in Ubuntu.

On 2011-04-08 05:13, Kevin Huang wrote:
> Hope you don't mind to refer to I captured the screen shots in
> sequence attached, because I am not sure if I can explain it in
> details in English.

Of course I don't mind. :) It's a good way to clarify your points and
prevent misunderstandings.

> 1. starting Locale: Simplified Chinese
> 2. Screen shot1 (bug): For some reason, Gwibber is in Aribic. Except
> Gwibber, other application names look fine.

Probably you either made Arabic be included in the language priority
list, or you picked an Arabic locale on the "Regional Formats" tab in
Language Support.

> 3. log out
> 4. Screen shot2 (bug): The "Universal Access Preferences" icon on the
> right bottom is missing.

I know that that bug has been addressed, and I'd be surprised if it's
not fixed before the 11.04 release.

> 5. Screen shot3: password and language selection are in Simplified
> Chinese
> 6. Screen shot4: select language: English (America). The "password"
> is still kept as "密碼". From user's point of view, I would prefer it
> could be changed to "password" after I select language in English.
> However, I would say this is at lower priority.

There is a wish for such a feature in bug 24935. Can't tell whether it
would be reasonable to implement it.

> 7. login
> 8. Screen shot5: all names of preinstalled applications are in
> English. There are several applications in "Apps available for
> download" in Simplified Chinese.

Probably those apps ignore both the LANGUAGE and LC_MESSAGES variables,
and use the $LANG value directly to determine the display language.

I have a vague idea of what might be done to improve Ubuntu's Language
Support in this respect, but it would need to be discussed first.

> 9. logout
> 10. screen shot6: password and language selection are in Simplified
> Chinese which should be in English.

No, it should not. Since you haven't changed the system language, it's
still simplified Chinese.

> 11. screen shot7: all languages in language selection list are in
> Simplified Chinese.

Since you haven't changed the system language, it's still simplified
Chinese.

> 12. screen shot8: select language: 阿拉伯语 (Aribirc).
> 13: login
> 14: screen shot9: Most names of preinstalled application are in
> Arabic although the translation quality is not as high as in
> Simplified Chinese. There are several applications in "Apps
> available for download" in Simplified Chinese.

At this point I assume that the second item in the language priority
list is simplified Chinese, and also that the $LANG variable contains
the name of a locale representing simplified Chinese. Therefore it's not
unreasonable that some apps fall back to simplified Chinese.

> 15: logout, select English, login, then install traditional Chinese
> and Japanese.
> 16: logout
> 17: no matter I select Japanese or Traditional Chinese, the GDM is
> always in Simplified Chinese, and several applications in "Apps
> available for download" are in Simplified Chinese.

Explained above, I think.