[Bug 1907914] Re: default locale when selecting english(US) and belgian timezone is incorrect

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

Thanks for your report!

#1 would be a more long-term solution. For that you would need to
propose en_BE to be created and convince the upstream glibc maintainers
that it's needed.

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/enter_bug.cgi?product=glibc;component=localedata

#2 would be a non-trivial change to the installer, and it would add an
extra step to the installation, even if it wouldn't be useful for most
users.

For now I think #3 is what's doable. I submitted a merge proposal which
would do that.

** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided => Medium

** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => In Progress

** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu)
     Assignee: (unassigned) => Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1907914

Title:
  default locale when selecting english(US) and belgian timezone is
  incorrect

Status in ubiquity package in Ubuntu:
  In Progress

Bug description:
  When installing ubuntu (20.04 and later (earlier also probably))selecting
  - english (US) language
  - Brussels-Belgian timezone

  ubuntu selects de_BE as locale which is teh Belgian German-language
  locale

  in Belgium about 60% are dutch-speaking (nl_BE) and 40% are french
  speaking (fr_BE) and less than 1% are german speaking (de_BE)-->
  choosing de_BE seems to be a bad default value

  related ubiquity code is here :
  https://git.launchpad.net/ubiquity/tree/scripts/localechooser-apply

  it seems when a language (en) is selected for Belgium which is not
  available as a locale (i.e. en-BE) the locale de_BE is chosen using
  this code

  -- code --
    combined="$(grep ' UTF-8' /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED | \
     grep "${deflang}_$COUNTRY[.@ ]" | head -n1 | \
     cut -d' ' -f1)"
  -- code --

  de_BE is chosen as I suppose it is alphabetically before fr_BE and
  nl_BE

  I'm not sure what the best solution is

  I'd propose the following changes in order of my preference
  1. add a en_BE locale (https://www.localeplanet.com/icu/en-BE/index.html) and make that default for non wa, nl, fr and de languages
  2. allow user to select nl_BE or fr_BE locale when installing ubuntu (and maybe also de_BE or wa_BE which have much smaller % of people in Belgium) - may require a change of ubuntu install process - but I guess Belgium is not the only country with several languages with similar issues : Switzerland, ...
  3. set default language nl for Belgium (might be politically problematic for 40% of Belgian people) but makes more sense than de

  related AskUbuntu question : https://askubuntu.com/questions/1299522
  /belgian-formats-when-choosing-us-language-regional-language-settings-
  issue

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