Slackware 12 - Setting locale - english language, koi8-r encoding.

ErV · 07-09-2007, 12:56 PM

Hello.
I'm looking for a way to set system locale to english and encoding to koi8-r. I just want output from all programs to be in english while being able to use koi8-r from command-line and anywhere. The problem is that some programs uses LANG variables to determine locale and encoding and they use it in different way.
Currently /etc/profile.d/lang.sh has following content (I've removed comments):

Code:

#!/bin/sh

export LANG=ru_RU.KOI8-R
export LC_MESSAGES=en_EN
export LC_COLLATE=C

This works mostly perfect but some programs still give me russian output. (for example, man prints messages in russian.)

I've tried setting LANG to something like "en_EN.KOI8-R", but while this works for most programs it breaks some other programs (perl starts complaining about setlocale problems, wine applications render garbage instead of russian letters, etc).

Basically I need this to make all help files and menus to be displayed in english, while commonly used encoding will be koi8-r. How can I do that?

Thanks.

P.S. I could just remove all russian help files, but there is another user on that machine and he will need those files.

bathory · 07-10-2007, 06:23 AM

Quote:

export LC_MESSAGES=en_EN

This is wrong. There is no locale en_EN. You can use en_US or run

Code:

locale -a

to see the available locales that suit your needs.

ErV · 07-10-2007, 08:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bathory

This is wrong. There is no locale en_EN. You can use en_US

Well, I'll try to change it to en_US, but system didn't complain about anything when en_EN was set as the only locale.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bathory

or run

Code:

locale -a

to see the available locales that suit your needs.

According to that list, KOI8-R is supported only by ru_RU.

ErV · 07-12-2007, 05:50 AM

Changing LC_MESSAGES to en_US didn't change anything - it works just like with en_EN. Some programs still prints output russian language.Any more ideas?

bathory · 07-12-2007, 06:14 AM

The language that a command uses for output is controlled from LC_MESSAGES. To test this run:

Code:

export LC_MESSAGES=en_EN
man non-existent-command

export LC_MESSAGES=en_US
man non-existent-command

In the first case you should get the output in russian (because of the LANG that is used) and in the second case you'll have the output in english.

ErV · 07-12-2007, 06:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bathory

The language that a command uses for output is controlled from LC_MESSAGES. To test this run:

Well, I'm very sorry for previous post - almost everything works perfectly now, I just didn't notice it because of one java app, that selected russian interface automatically (OmegaT).

Russian language still appears in some places (some qt applications), but otherwise everything is fine. Thanks for the help, problem mostly solved.