hi all,
im currently doing some research into localisation issues with linux for a report. as i'm from australian and speak english i have actually had no experience changing any of the localisation settings (beyond time zone that is).

well anyways i've found it really difficult getting info on this as i need to know specifics (as in what files do i need for kde, xfree86, etc).

can anyone help me out with this, from what i can figure i need the kde-i18n files to translate kde gui and docs, font files for xfree86 for chinese and japanese (and others?), and the language locale.

can anyone offer some info on this? and what does it mean by locale???

thanks,
bofh

In the generic sense a locale "represents a specific geographical, political, or cultural region[1]" which usually has unique ways to display date, time, currency, and special characters.

For example, in order for a user to use an application in chile and south carolina, the user must be able to select his locale. The application then modifies the way it displays data to the user. I have run into this many times at work when writing POS software for customers in mexico and south america.

I've found alot of information (specifically to kde) at http://i18n.kde.org

Here's the i18n mailing archive for XFree86:
http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/i18n/

Hope this helps!

[1] java.util.Locale - Java 1.1.8 documentation

thanks for the reply. you've helped me alot. just one question though (that i should have put in my first message), are all the locale files installed with the system? or do they need to be downloaded? if so where from?

thanks
bofh

An `rpm -qa | grep locale` returns:

locales-2.3.1-7mdk
locales-en-2.3.1-7mdk


but looking on the Mandrake (8.0) CD in the Mandrake/RPMS I found several i18n rpms (fr, uk, de...) that weren't installed.

I've found the locale data files in /usr/share/locale/.
I'm sure most distributions support some form of i18n and each probably has a different location for the files.

no2nt