Package: locales Version: 2.7-18 Severity: important Tags: l10n I love the way Debian lets users make their own choises, and would like to recommend Debian to all my friends. Now the longstanding "language soup" problem for the Norwegian locales keeps me from doing just that.
The problem: When I install Debian and choose Norwegian locale I get a language soup of Norwegian, Sweedish, Danish and English in most programs. This issue pertains to messages in console programs as well as in several programs for X11. The soup is present in both versions of Norvegian (Bokmaal and Nynorsk). I suppose this is due to the fact that most .po files and simialar translation files are more completely translated for Sweedish and Danish than for the Norwegian languages. In a freshly installed system the file /etc/default/locale contains a sting somewhat like this: LANGUAGE="nb_NO:nb:sw_SW:da_DK:en" I edited mine, so I do not have the original string anymore, sorry. Now most, if not all, Norwegians understand Danish, Sweedish and English, at least to a certain extent. Having a computer system that speaks all five (remember; Norwegian has two versions) at the same time and in the same program is very confusing. This happens if different parts of the .po files are translated for the different locales. This is not just a theoretical situation. It happened to me a lot, and it took some sysadmin read-up to locate the /etc/default logical structure the first time round. My proposal would be to make the string reflect the real language situation in Norway. I suggest making the string include only the selected locale for the system, together with the "en" catch-all. This is because Bokmaal and Nynorsk really are two different languages in their own right. Mixing strings from both languages only makes it harder to discern which strings are left for translation work; the same string in nb_NO and nn_NO can be different in one letter only, even though the string in question amounts to a complete sentence. Rather like en_US and en_GB, I believe. My proposal is thus to make the sting in /etc/default/locale read as follows: For Norwegian Bokmaal: LANGUAGE="nb_NO:nb:en" For Norwegian Nynorsk: LANGUAGE="nn_NO:nn:en" Now this leaves the locale "no" in the cold. I am not certain as to how this locale is implemented. My guess is that it is a leftover from the time when there was no distinction between the two languages in Debian. The only reason for leaving it in might be in order for it to work as a catch-all for web pages that use this non-existant locale. I believe some browsers use $LANGUAGE to negotiate the language for web pages. If this is the case it should be inserted right in front of the "en" catch-all. >From what I learn from http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=515099 the change should be made in the debhelper.in/locales.postinst script. Maybe I am in err here, as I never even looked at this file. If someone feels strongly against my proposal, please do not hesitate to speak up. As I remember form some previous reading og bug reports around this issue years ago the string was implemented like this after a discussion with the developers working on Debian Edu (Skolelinux, http://www.skolelinux.no, http://www.slx.no). I do not know the status of their work in this area. ;)Frode -- System Information: Debian Release: 5.0.3 APT prefers stable APT policy: (500, 'stable') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-2-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=nb_NO.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=nb_NO.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Versions of packages locales depends on: ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.24 Debian configuration management sy ii libc6 [glibc-2.7-1] 2.7-18 GNU C Library: Shared libraries locales recommends no packages. locales suggests no packages. -- debconf information: locales/default_environment_locale: None locales/locales_to_be_generated: -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
