locale for the root user

[Bill Allombert <allomber@math.u-bordeaux.fr>]

Hello Debian-installer team,

During the baseconfig part of the install, locales are set up,
while root has C locale by default (but the user account has 
correct locales).

This has some consequences:
1) Debian menu is translated, since update-menus was ran under
proper locales! This is very nice ! Thanks to everybody involved!

2) The debconf database might contain some non-7bit value 
(especially since some default value are translated by non-7bit string)
Unfortunately, if root rerun debconf, it will use C-locale and it
seems debconf under C locale does not handle well non-7bit string in
the database. I had problems with dexconf "Enter an indentifier for
your video card" which default in french to "carte vidéo générique".

3) If root rerun update-menus (by installing a package) under C locale,
user will louse the translation :(.

So:
a) should the root user be configured with proper locale by d-i ?
b) could some applications get the 'system language' somewhere
and use it when LANG=C ?

(before you ask, menu support per user translation when non-root users
rerun update-menus for themselves under their own locales)

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here.