Locales documentation - custom locale

[Dominik Grafenhofer]

Hi all,

I would like to create a new custom locale (basically irish english +
monday as first day of the week). Where can I find recent information
on how locales are implemented in Fedora (I am on Fedora 29)? I found
lots of outdated information, which was somewhat helpful, but also
quite confusing.

Thank you,
Dominik

Background: Gnome-shell does not allow to customize locale settings
beyond choosing one locale setting globally (ui language, currency,
first day of week,...).

[Rafal Luzynski]

9.11.2018 14:39 Dominik Grafenhofer  wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I would like to create a new custom locale (basically irish english +
> monday as first day of the week).

Off-topic: does not en_GB.utf8 provide this functionality?

Is there a bug in the existing en_IE locale which needs a fix?
> Where can I find recent information
> on how locales are implemented in Fedora (I am on Fedora 29)? I found
> lots of outdated information, which was somewhat helpful, but also
> quite confusing.

Locales are implemented in glibc rather than Fedora. I don't remember
where I saw it written but the message was that since all existing
documentation is currently outdated the recommended way is to take a source
code of any existing locale [1] and rework it for your own needs.

The tool to build your own locale data is called localedef. You can
find some documentation at the command line:

localedef --help
    man localedef
    info localedef

The purpose of this tool is to allow the users to build and use their own
locales. You don't need the root privileges to use it. Therefore your idea
seems to be correct.

That said, I'm trying to find a simpler solution to your problem.
> Thank you,
> Dominik
>
> Background: Gnome-shell does not allow to customize locale settings
> beyond choosing one locale setting globally (ui language, currency,
> first day of week,...).

I'm not sure but as far as I understand this, GNOME allows you to select
a locale for language (messages) and formats (I guess this is everything
else). Is it sufficient for you?

If not you may have to set the localization environment variables
(LC_MESSAGES, LC_TIME, LC_MEASUREMENT etc.) individually in your profile
scripts.

If really none of these options works then you will have to build your
own locale. Again, in order to use it you will have to set the environment
variables (e.g., path to your new locale) in your profile scripts.

Regards,

Rafal

[1] https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=tree;f=localedata/locales

[Dominik Grafenhofer]

Hi,

Thanks for your answer! As we speak, I have solved my problem (see
below). That aside, I think that there is a serious issue with Gnome's
handling of locales:

On Mon, 2018-11-12 at 19:45 +0100, Rafal Luzynski wrote:
> 9.11.2018 14:39 Dominik Grafenhofer  wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I would like to create a new custom locale (basically irish english
> >
> > monday as first day of the week).
>
> Off-topic: does not en_GB.utf8 provide this functionality?

No, I would like to have Euro as my default currency.
> Is there a bug in the existing en_IE locale which needs a fix?

I am a German speaking user, living in Germany. Still, I would like to
use English (UK) language settings (UI, Email templates,...), but
retain some other conventions used in Germany (Monday as first day of
week, Euro as currency). en_IE is the closest I could get using default
locales.
> > Where can I find recent information
> > on how locales are implemented in Fedora (I am on Fedora 29)? I
> > found
> > lots of outdated information, which was somewhat helpful, but also
> > quite confusing.
>
> Locales are implemented in glibc rather than Fedora. I don't remember
> where I saw it written but the message was that since all existing
> documentation is currently outdated the recommended way is to take a
> source
> code of any existing locale [1] and rework it for your own needs.
>
> The tool to build your own locale data is called localedef. You can
> find some documentation at the command line:
> localedef --help
> man localedef
> info localedef

The missing piece in the documentation is, that you have to install the
"glibc-locale-source" package to make localedef compile locales (see
below). The error message localedef yields was not clear enough for me
to realize, that there is a package missing. In a desperate move, I
consulted dnf to tell me packages containing the substring locale.
glibc-locale-source sounded somewhat appropriate.
> The purpose of this tool is to allow the users to build and use their
> own
> locales. You don't need the root privileges to use it. Therefore your
> idea
> seems to be correct.
>
> That said, I'm trying to find a simpler solution to your problem.

... which is - as far as I know (see info spread across this mail) -
not feasible.
> > Thank you,
> > Dominik
> >
> > Background: Gnome-shell does not allow to customize locale settings
> > beyond choosing one locale setting globally (ui language, currency,
> > first day of week,...).
>
> I'm not sure but as far as I understand this, GNOME allows you to
> select
> a locale for language (messages) and formats (I guess this is
> everything
> else). Is it sufficient for you?

Unfortunately no. I would like to mix and match different formats (see
above).
> If not you may have to set the localization environment variables
> (LC_MESSAGES, LC_TIME, LC_MEASUREMENT etc.) individually in your
> profile
> scripts.

Yes, that would be great - if Gnome Shell would adhere to that
wish/configuration setting. It applies the LANG setting (if i am not
mistaken) to all other areas (LC_TIME, LC_MEASUREMENT, etc.) as well.
> If really none of these options works then you will have to build
> your
> own locale. Again, in order to use it you will have to set the
> environment
> variables (e.g., path to your new locale) in your profile scripts.

Yes, this is how it worked:

1) I downloaded an appropriate locale close enough to what I was
looking for (i.e. en_IE in my case). [*]
2) I have made adjustments to the file.
3) I installed glibc-locale-source (this was the step which I found out
about only now, and which kept me from arriving at the solution
earlier).
4) Run "localedef -f UTF-8 -i en_DE en_DE.UTF-8" to compile the locale.
4) Add "LANG=en_DE.UTF-8" to /etc/locale.conf (or better to a local
profile)
5) Reboot

Yay! Works!
> Regards,
>
> Rafal

Thank you for taking time to guide me in the right direction!

Best,
Dominik

[*] Better source: After installing glibc-locale-source
/usr/share/i18n/locales/ is populated with locale source files.
> [1] 
> https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=tree;f=localedata/locales