Fwd: Bug#45256: Meaning of LANG/LC_* only partially overrideable from Control Center.

[Daniel Molkentin]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Is there a reason why we still depend on our own locale settings?

</daniel>

- ----------  On Monday 15 July 2002 22:16, egmont at cs.bme.hu wrote:  ----------

Subject: Bug#45256: Meaning of LANG/LC_* only partially overrideable from 
Control Center.
Date: Monday 15 July 2002 22:16
From: egmont at cs.bme.hu
To: submit at bugs.kde.org

Package: kcontrol
Version: KDE 3.0.0
Severity: normal
Installed from:    SuSE RPMs
Compiler:          gcc 2.95.3
OS:                Linux
OS/Compiler notes: Not Specified
Traditional Linux applications use LANG and LC_* env variables to determine
 the language. KDE primarly uses the value set in the Control Center most of
 the time, but not always. This approach is the worst possible design I
 guess, either KDE should override/ignore all the LANG/LC_* variables, or
 should only use those ones (and then Control Center could _set_ these values
 for the launched applications). This inconsistency leads to the following
 two bugs, or let's rather say, consequences. (Sorry, I write two bugs in one
 entry since this design misconception is IMHO much more important than the
 two bugs themselves, which are only consequences of the same brain-damaged
 design). Bug1. If all your LANG and LC_* environment variables refer to a
 Latin-1 language (e.g. the system administrator has set English or similar
 as default language) and then KDE is set to Hungarian (which is Latin-2)
 then accented letters are printed as question marks in window titles. Launch
 "Vezerlokozpont" (Control Center) from the K-menu. This word has an
 odoubleacute in it. The word appears correctly in the K-menu and on icon bar
 while the application window is not yet visible. As soon as it gets visible,
 the icon bar changes to "Vezerl?kozpont" and the window titlebar will have
 this same string, with an "?" instead of odoubleacute. If LC_CTYPE=hu_HU is
 set before KDE is launched, this word always appears correctly. Then I
 wonder why KDE's language choosing utility is there if LC_CTYPE can override
 its settings. Consider a single user, s/he won't ever find out why things
 are bad, and how to fix those accents. Bug2. File sorting order is
 determined based on LC_COLLATE, not on the languages given in the Control
 Center. Even if I choose Hungarian language, file names are sorted with
 accent letters at the end in Konqueror. This is because SuSE sets
 LC_COLLATE=POSIX. (They do have their reason for it, e.g. the pattern [a-z]*
 matches a, A, b, B, ..., z, but not Z, which really sucks in shell scripts,
 if LC_COLLATE is set to a specific language.) However, if I set
 LC_COLLATE=hu_HU, konqueror sorts files in perfect Hungarian alphabetical
 order. If there is a language choosing utility in Control Center, it should
 set the sorting method, too, a beginner user won't ever bother with setting
 environment variables, s/he needs click-click-style settings of the sorting.
 (Submitted via bugs.kde.org)
(Complete bug history is available at http://bugs.kde.org/db/45/45256.html)

- -------------------------------------------------------

- -- 
Daniel Molkentin <molkentin at kde.org> | The K Desktop Environment
KDE - Konqueror your Desktop!
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

iD8DBQE9My1Yu1Wkf8kBwz4RAoctAJ9NyAIWzxORhPrc03EH0bHUZAilqACfYiRa
ZJRlIduZQkIEgjXY7lPXJNA=
=0qc0
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----