Language support not installed matching locale

[David]

When Ubuntu is installed with UK locale settings during setup, all of the language support is not installed and some applications e.g. LibreOffice display with non-UK English. The extra language support is prompted to be installed *the first time* the user accesses the language options (see screenshot attached).

When this language support is installed, these applications then (correctly) display menus etc in UK English.

Ubuntu setup appears to not install the matching locale languages.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

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[David (dave400)]

What package forms "language support"?

[Anthony Harrington (linuxchemist)]

Perhaps this bug report is meant for the ubiquity ubuntu installer?

If I understand correctly, the issue is that the user only gets one chance to install the corresponding locale packages for their chosen locale during first setup of ubuntu, and not again until they do it manually after ubuntu's been installed? Or is it that some packages are not being installed automatically after choosing English UK? Doesn't it try to install as many relevant packages as it can already?

Would the ideal behaviour be 'user selects locale as British English (UK), therefore install all related packages like: libreoffice-help-en-gb, libreoffice-l10n-en-gb, myspell-en-gb, hunspell-en-gb during setup automatically?
Just to confirm - these packages are included in the .iso locally, so they wouldn't require an internet connection during first setup?

Do other languages have this issue?

[David (dave400)]

When the user selects a different language to English-US (e.g. English-UK), all of the UK language packs should also be installed during installation. Maybe ubiquity is the focus of the bug report?

When the user selects English-UK during Ubuntu installation, why don't the related packages get installed (libreoffice-help-en-gb, libreoffice-l10n-en-gb, myspell-en-gb, hunspell-en-gb etc)?

I don't know if other languages are affected. The only way to test is to install Ubuntu with a different ENGLISH language than English-US. Then see if LibreOffice menus are showing US-English e.g. words like "color" instead of "colour".

[Anthony Harrington (linuxchemist)]

Actually, this bug might be for gnome-language-selector.
If you have a look at your regional and language settings, it seems that so long as your chosen language is any variant of english, it suggests to install all the available language stuff (including libreoffice files) for ALL english possibilities.

For example, I've already got most of the en-gb ones installed already on an as-needed basis, and it's telling me to install the following or to remind it later:

gimp-help-en
libreoffice-help-en-us
hunspell-en-ca
hyphen-en-ca
hyphen-en-gb
mythes-en-au
hunspell-en-us
wamerican
libreoffice-help-en-gb
mythes-en-us
libreoffice-l10n-en-za
hunspell-en-au
hyphen-en-us
hunspell-en-za

I'm not sure there's really an issue here...other than the language-selector is perhaps not pushy enough that you should install some more of the packages for en-gb. Noone wants it getting annoying, and you _are_ free to install en-gb packages later? I guess that since english US (default) is still understandable to an English UK reader, this was never considered critical.

[David (dave400)]

If it installs all of the language packages in other languages, except for English-UK (and other non-US English locales), then it IS a bug.

The ubiquity installer could install every language pack when the user chooses English-UK - it makes sense. The user wants English-UK, so please install all of them.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

There is indeed an inconsistency between the installer and language-selector in this respect. The issue is reported in bug #1294858. That bug report is a bit 'noisy', but in comment #3 you find my idea for a solution and the reasons for it.

So even if this bug may be considered a duplicate, let's keep it for now as a reminder. After all the issue is closely related to the behavior of language-selector.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

@David and @Anthony: It would be useful to know to which Ubuntu version your observations relate.

[David (dave400)]

Ubuntu 16.04 and above.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

On 2017-12-31 01:47, David wrote:
> Ubuntu 16.04 and above.

Ok, thanks. I asked because some corrections were made before the release of 17.10, which ought to make sure that if you install 17.10 with e.g. the British locale, all the British language support packages are installed.

But the more general issue, as described in bug #1294858, is still present.

[David (dave400)]

Still present on Ubuntu 18.04.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

On 2018-05-25 22:49, David wrote:
> Still present on Ubuntu 18.04.

Hmm.. Yes it is. Unlike what I assumed in my comments above, there seems to be an issue beyond bug #1294858.

I installed Ubuntu 18.04 with these selections:

* English language
* Normal installation
* London (UK) as the time zone location

This resulted in en_GB.UTF-8 being set as the locale:

$ cat /etc/default/locale
# File generated by update-locale
LANG="en_GB.UTF-8"

And these are the additional packages which Language Support suggests that I install:

$ check-language-support | tr ' ' '\n'
hunspell-en-au
hunspell-en-ca
hunspell-en-gb
hunspell-en-za
hyphen-en-ca
hyphen-en-gb
libreoffice-help-en-gb
libreoffice-l10n-en-gb
libreoffice-l10n-en-za
mythes-en-au
thunderbird-locale-en-gb

I.e. several British packages which ought to be installed already. This command should not output anything:

$ check-language-support -l en_GB | tr ' ' '\n'
hunspell-en-gb
hyphen-en-gb
libreoffice-help-en-gb
libreoffice-l10n-en-gb
thunderbird-locale-en-gb

but it does.

So it looks like the installer behaves, with respect to language support, as if I had installed with the en_US.UTF-8 locale.

Not sure that 16.04 behaves this way. In any case it's incorrect behavior and should be fixed.

[Ubuntu QA Website (ubuntuqa)]

This bug has been reported on the Ubuntu ISO testing tracker.

A list of all reports related to this bug can be found here:
http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/reports/bugs/1732222

[soredake (soredake)]

Any progress on this?

[David (dave400)]

No.

After installing all apps in Ubuntu 20.04, go to Language Support and you will still see the prompt that "Language support is not installed completely".