[SOLVED] How do I activate the proper locale on my Debian system? (en-CA)

mark_alfred · 07-21-2017, 05:07 PM

Hello. I'm using Debian stable (9.0 -- aka Stretch). I used to use Vector Linux a while back, and I enabled the locale of en-CA via editing the file /etc/profile.d/lang.sh replacing "en-US" with "en-CA". After, programs had Canadian spellings rather than American (IE, "colour" or "centre" rather than "color" or "center").

But there is no such file on Debian. I have messed around with stuff from the Debian wiki (https://wiki.debian.org/Locale) on locales, but to no avail. It currently looks like this:

Code:

mark@debian:~$ locale
LANG=en_CA.utf8
LANGUAGE=en_CA:en
LC_CTYPE="en_CA.utf8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_CA.utf8"
LC_TIME="en_CA.utf8"
LC_COLLATE="en_CA.utf8"
LC_MONETARY="en_CA.utf8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_CA.utf8"
LC_PAPER="en_CA.utf8"
LC_NAME="en_CA.utf8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_CA.utf8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_CA.utf8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_CA.utf8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_CA.utf8"
LC_ALL=

However, spellings within programs are all en-US.

aus9 · 07-21-2017, 07:46 PM

Hi

locale looks good

what is Desktop environment or window manager

provide a short list of the main programs you find US spelling pls

2) you can also get specific lang packs for some web browsers

you can get some lang packs for large office suites too

3) as a quick and dirty work a round, if all else fails try GB ....aussie spell the same as brits

HappyTux · 07-21-2017, 10:25 PM

Try installing the Canadian dictionary package.

Code:

apt-cache  show wcanadian
Package: wcanadian
Source: scowl
Version: 7.1-1
Installed-Size: 990
Maintainer: Don Armstrong <don@debian.org>
Architecture: all
Provides: wordlist
Depends: dictionaries-common (>= 0.20), debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0
Description-en: Canadian English dictionary words for /usr/share/dict
 This package provides the file /usr/share/dict/canadian-english
 containing a list of English words with Canadian spellings.
 This list can be used by spelling checkers, and by programs such
 as look(1).
 .
 There are also -small, -large and -huge versions of this word list,
 and there are wbritish* and wamerican* packages as well.
Description-md5: fda6495f146f251df0601393fe5b6c65
Homepage: http://wordlist.sourceforge.net/
Tag: culture::TODO, made-of::dictionary, role::app-data, use::checking
Section: text
Priority: optional
Filename: pool/main/s/scowl/wcanadian_7.1-1_all.deb
Size: 272090
MD5sum: 98617111cf8eeb4e1a1eccdeef80deb0
SHA1: ecad69aa879807d7cf3999b52dd27008c0f8cb71
SHA256: e25c244a29c2c09233070b32ee6db977fa76fcace64ba810c5cceedbd4fbf75e

jim_p · 07-21-2017, 11:44 PM

For the locale part.
Recently, I decided to change my system to the greek locale. I ran

Code:

dpkg-reconfigure locales

and selected only these ones on the first question

Code:

el_GR ISO-8859-7
el_GR.UTF-8 UTF-8

en_US.ISO-8859-15 ISO-8859-15
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

and on the second one, about the system locale, I selected el_GR ISO-8859-7. This is pretty much what the wiki explains in the "manually" section, with the dpkg-reconfigure ease of use. After a reboot, everything (desktop enviroment, apps etc) was switched to the greek locale.

No idea about the spelling part

mark_alfred · 07-22-2017, 11:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aus9

what is Desktop environment or window manager

provide a short list of the main programs you find US spelling pls

I use XFCE. Anyway, as far as which programs, it is all of them. It's not actually a big deal, given that it's usually only seen in menu choices (and most often in "preferences"). Generally it's words like "center" and "color" that appear most.

For the bigger programs, I realize (realise?) that special language versions of them (if available) would need to be installed*, and would only be available in en-gb and not the small-fry en-ca. Though, from what I can tell, regarding smaller programs, it seems none of them acknowledge the en-ca locale (which was not my experience some years ago when I used Vector Linux). Included in the programs with US spellings is Synaptic. I figure if any program should have settings for all the locales, it's this one, since it's Debian's main GUI package management tool. I figure there must be something I've neglected to do to enable the locale setting to work, but I'm not sure what it is.
_____
* I did do this with Thunderbird recently, and haven't had any luck here either (I do have a separate thread on that though).

mark_alfred · 07-22-2017, 03:50 PM

I think I was getting overly particular. Seems that some spellings actually were changed when I enacted the en-ca localization. But, some of the more apparent things, like menu items, remain fixed in their original state (that being US English). I just took a look at two programs, those being Geany (a text editor) and Gimp (a photo editor) and they each feature some Canadian spellings. I've included two attachments. The first shows Geany's "Color Chooser", which, below in the window, says, "Colour name: #FFFFFF". The second one is Gimp's Colour Balance tool. The main window of Gimp gives the menu option of "Colors", but when a picture is opened and the Colour Balance tool is enacted, it gives the Canadian spelling of "colour". So, it's kinda half-assed, but it's something. So, solved.