Mock-up of proposed changes to the options dialog to expand the Defaults to show what they are, adding a “Default” entry for Document Language that get resolved at each-start rather than selecting a Document Language at first-start that sticks permanently.
I wish this was possible for other defaults too… I hate how each time after e *new install*, when I need to adjust something about the page layout I realise I have to go first in page options and set to A4 and to options and put cm as the measurement unit… of course you forget to do those right after the install and get bit exactly when you have something else, more important, to do.
Personally (assuming we’re talking about a Linux setup) I’d say you’re possibly fighting against your desktop’s Locale settings which I bet are set to en_US if you’re getting inches as your measurement units and getting Letter as your page size. You’re also probably getting mm/dd/yyyy as your date format and dollars as your currency
. Under this proposal, if you look at my “Default” OOo locale entry, meaning that it’s tracking my system Locale, now we can see that its en_IE where cm, A4 and € are the defaul. This way you at least get to see what “Default” has been expanded to.
As an aside, a lot of people want to have an English US UI by default in all their applications despite not actually being in the US, but then want all the other Locale settings to be their true locale settings, or some hybrid in between.
What we need to do here is to fixup in OOo the places where we’re not using LANGUAGE but should. Then stick some sort of Locale Configuration utility into GNOME with some graphical displays to indicate what every setting controls in practice. i.e. gettext extension LANGUAGE variable to specify a list of languages in order of priority that the UI of apps should be displayed in, glibc extension LC_PAPER to control what the default paper size is, and the whole remaining confusing pile of LC_foos.
Yes, I was talking about OOo on Fedora.
Yeah, undoubtedly the output of “locale” is en_US.utf8 for every setting then. A trivial quick-fix is to set your locale on login from gdm to a different English locale that has more “natural” settings, e.g. en_GB or better en_IE or something where cm, A4, and dd/mm/yyyy date format. Long term a better desktop locale tweaking thingy is indicated.