Locale names for glibc

["Petr Kolar" <PETR.KOLAR@vslib.cz>]

There is a (known?) locale chaos - glibc locales are in directories
with names cs_CZ, fr_FR, fr_BE, de_DE etc. (under /usr/share/locale), while
localized program messages are in cs, fr, de, etc..

   That is clear that some languages are spoken in several countries, thus
while e.g. French sorting would be (I think) the same for french, belgian,
swiss, canadian, etc. French language, the name of the monetary unit, the 
number of digits on right hand side of decimal point in monetary values, 
etc. would be different.

   There is the question how to set locale's environment variables. If you
use short form (cs, fr, de, ...) the glibc locale files from cs_CZ, fr_FR, 
etc. will be ignored. If you use longer form (cs_CZ, fr_FR, de_DE), the 
locales are taken from xx_XX directories and when they are not there, they 
are taken from xx directories. But then there is problem with man pages and
X resources, which are at least in some Linux distributions expected in 
/usr/man/xx/. Or should they be in /usr/man/xx_XX?

   There is also another possibility - to set locale's environment
variables to czech, french, german or any other alias defined in 
/usr/share/locale/locale.alias.

   Is there some policy on locales? I did not find any. And the existence
of sk and sk_SK, da and da_DK, pl and pl_PL, cs and cs_CZ, (generally 
xx and xx_XX) etc. is a reality.

   What is "the best" solution?




--
                          ***  Petr Kolar  ***
 Department of Information Technologies, Technical University of Liberec
             Voronezska 1329, 461 17 Liberec, Czech Republic
             Phone: +420-48-535-2371   Fax: +420-48-535-2229
  E-mail: Petr.Kolar@vslib.cz  http://asterix.vslib.cz/staff/kolar.html