Bug#311259: error and omission in documentation of LANGUAGE

[barbier@mp4h.org (Denis Barbier)]

On Fri, Jun 03, 2005 at 04:56:18PM -0400, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
> > On Mon, May 30, 2005 at 10:59:29AM +0200, Mirko Parthey wrote:
> > > Package: glibc-doc
> > > Version: 2.3.2.ds1-22
> > > 
> > > LANGUAGE seems to have no effect unless LANG is set to something other
> > > than C. I would propose to document this behaviour in the libc reference
> > > manual, where LANGUAGE is explained.
> > 
> > This documentation states:
> >      At the program start the default domain is `messages', and the
> >   default locale is "C".  The `setlocale' call sets the locale according
> >   to the user's environment variables; remember that correct functioning
> >   of `gettext' relies on the correct setting of the `LC_MESSAGES' locale
> >   (for looking up the message catalog) and of the `LC_CTYPE' locale (for
> >   the character set conversion).
> > 
> > So basically you should not set LC_MESSAGES to C (either explicitly or
> > through LANG or LC_ALL variables) if you want localized output.  There
> > are some discussions at http://bugs.debian.org/308853
> 
> Except that the problem is that (if everything but LANGUAGE is unset)
> I would have expected LANGUAGE to set LC_MESSAGES, and it doesn't. 

This situation should not happen, this is a user configuration error.
All non-ASCII characters are replaced by question marks if LC_CTYPE
is unset, so these settings are not usable.

Denis