For some reason (crap translations ?, just prefer using English ?), it’s common for some non-english speakers to run their desktop with an en_US locale but then to have difficulties that stuff like openoffice.org, etc. defaults to letter size paper and inches for display units. So my modest suggestion is that if you want to use an English locale then a non en_US locale like e.g. en_GB will default to the way more common A4 paper format and also default to cm for units. Even better for most europeans, using en_IE will also give you A4, cm and additionally the default currency as Euro.
The clean solution is to set LC_PAPER to a local locale, and LC_MESSAGES (or LC_COLLATE, or LANG, whatever the user wants) to en_US.UTF-8.
Unfortunately the extended locale standard specifying LC_PAPER did not become a part of POSIX – but it still can be used in Linux.
I do use en_US and I had problems with letter instead of A4 in the past. I’m not sure about the inches, though. It’s a real pain in the ass and en_GB might be a good way out (en_IE being no better for me). Does en_GB have the same “translation” as en_US or is it really british english? Would be a reason against en_GB for me personally.
Thanks for the hint, anyway.
red,
en_GB doesn’t share the same translation as en_US, but the differences aren’t that great – it retains a few unique spellings, nothing that (I hope) you couldn’t handle.
en_IE similarly derives from en_GB, but again, can contain differences.
Caolan,
I am a German and use always the en_US locales (because the German translations for applications and GNOME are so incomplete in my opinion). Then, for example, to get the A4 paper size or the EURO curreny I install the OpenOffice German language package (de) and configure OO accordingly.
Regards
Dieter
Set LANG=de_DE and LC_MESSAGES=C and you get the best behaviour if you are German. This will set messages to english but everything else (paper, currency, …) to the proper german settings.
Many more educated people talking natively other languages prefer English with their problems because a) If you get an error message you can actually Google for it and find something worthwhile b) Yes those translation are plain shit c) It’s good language practice d) Many environments (corporate) use English for the official communications anyways even though most of the people doesn’t speak English natively.
TBH the translations should be removed from applications altogether.
I’m in Australia and even though I select Australia and Sydney as my location during a Fedora anaconda install, the installation still defaults to set the locale as en_US.
I then have to manually change it to en_AU and then OO.o changes its defaults to A4 and metric. However, I would have thought it would be much nicer if it did this by default.
Personally I’m tired of getting Xhosa text marked as en_US. Plus I’m tired of en_US assumptions of my date requirements in some applications. I use en_ZA for my setup, since I made that locale I at least know it has everything correct.
I hold much higher hope that at least on FOSS platforms we stand more chance of getting people to use these features since we have the power to change things.
My frustration, certainly on Fedora is the limited ability to change this data. I can’t set a South African keyboard which is in X but not in system-config-keyboard. A user (I’m ignoring setting this up manually) can’t specify fallback languages. Our difficulty to be able to easily configure these things is I think the real frustration, the platform has all the abilities.
Why we use English? Mainly because for some of us, there is no “default language”. Too many are spoken a day: only today, I have already spoken 5 languages, which is pretty much what I do every day.
However, since I’ve been working with computers for so long and back in the day there was no option, English simply is *the choice* to operate a computer professionally.
I live in an environment where daily French and German is spoken and most companies I know have standardized on English. I think the main reason for that is that you’re supposed to know English in the first place and second: have you ever tried helping someone on the phone when you have a French version of the OS and the other side has a German version. I tell you it isn’t pretty.
The only places where I encounter translated operating systems are for home users (they have no choice and depending on the supermarket they buy their machine it might either be French or German.) or in small businesses where there is no centralised IT… meaning, they are essentially home computers used for a business.
English is the lingua franca of technology. If only I had an en_LU locale!
I think using anything else than english is blasphemy
(Note that I came here because my Debian box is set to en_US and I currently indeed have trouble with OpenOffice)