User configuration of language setting

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

Hello,

Debian Policy state that " A program must not depend on environment variables
to get reasonable defaults". This is very good, but of course sometimes users
need to set some variable to customize programs.  

One important example is locale setting via the LANG environment variable.
I know lots of french users who will benefit from a french environment, but use
the C locale, only because they do not know how to change it, even if they have
managed to install Debian themselves.

I configure locale by adding at the top of .xsession 

export LANG=french

Is it correct ? But it does not work if I log outside X.
Puting it in .profile work for terminal session but not for
programs spawn by the window manager, and for the window manager itself.


Debian has a very good system to help system configuration, I feel it 
need a system to manage user configuration,  for global setting
not linked with the use of a particular application.
We can add a user command "user-config" that run script added by packages
that manage configuration à la debconf.

Bill Allombert