How to make Slack installer print native language correctly + UTF-8 support ?

appzer0 · 03-31-2009, 01:52 PM

Hi,

I'm customizing the Slackware installer in order to allow localized (french) installation. The problem is that ncurses (which 'dialog' uses) cannot display characters others than latin1, which is the default. I'd also like to add the UTF-8 support - if possible - since my dev system is configured in UTF-8 (infact, th 'é' char is in latin-1 and displays correctly, the problem is that when an 'é' ('e accented cute') is printed, the frame is messed up, causing bad new lines and such bad display problems.

My questions are:

1- what packages do I need to recompile and how? What to modify in Busybox and 'initrd.img' to enable native language and wide character support ?

2- If no re-compilation is needed, how could I get these supports ? My needs are either having either UTF-8 support (fr_FR.UTF-8) or, if this is not possible, having ISO-8859-{13,15} encodings support would be just great.

2bis- Which binaries/scripts in the 'initrd.img' do I need to replace ?

The Slack installer (and so on the whole distro) is _entirely_ adapted right now. Displaying correct characters during installation is the last problem I have.

Sorry for my english and TIA.

Didier Spaier · 03-31-2009, 03:17 PM

Hello,

it seems that some people be able to display UTF-8 characters with ncurses, see http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=879169

Side note: I have set "export LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8" in /etc/profile.d/lang.sh

PS Peux-tu en dire plus sur ton projet ? Depuis le temps que j'attends Slackware en Français

Yalla-One · 04-01-2009, 01:47 AM

ncurses in slackware (at least -current) already has support for wide characters (UTF-8). You just need to make sure to have set the correct locale first, as the Ubuntu thread you referenced recommended.
From ncurses.SlackBuild:

Code:

# Build/install again with wide character support:
make clean
WIDEC=--enable-widec
ncurses_configure
make -j4 || exit 1
make install
make install DESTDIR=$PKG

As a side note, if you're already working on internationalizing the Slackware installer, would it be much extra work to make it fully localised and l10n compliant so that others can follow your footsteps to localise for other languages as well?

appzer0 · 04-01-2009, 07:29 AM

@Yalla-One: this was my first purpose (internationalization) though I'm not comfortable with gettext stuff BUT I could assign variables to strings displayed to user... But it represents too much extra work for now (which are not as good as I'd like). If everything is going fine (meaning "if my localized installer works as well as the original installer"), I will think about it.

About ncurses, I guess I'll have to take the binaries from the distribution (libs and executables) and place them in the initrd.img. I'll have to install the needed locales as well. Have no idea how to do this but it shouldn't be that hard. Any clue much appreciated.

@Didier Spaier: I'll let you know when it's ready! Btw i like your website :-)