[Bug 553162] Re: Set $LANGUAGE if the user picks a different locale in gdm, so that language-selector and gdm stop disagreeing

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

Hello Arne,

Thanks a bunch for your valuable comments.

On 2010-11-30 17:43, Arne Goetje wrote:
> The code in language-selector is a bit hackish and unprofessional, since
> Iʼm not an experience programmer or python coder ...

Maybe that's the reason why I'm fairly comfortable with the code. ;-)

> and this whole thing more or less got dumped on me and I was under
> pressure to deliver features in time for the Ubuntu release. :(

You have made great contributions, AFAICT.

> KDE has it's own means to handle the desktop language separate from the
> system locale, and therefor the QT version on language-selector does not
> include this functionality. The QT version of l-s is embedded in the
> regular KDE language handling interface, so duplicating this
> functionality would be counter-productive.

That was especially clarifying to me.

I can see that LANG and LANGUAGE have been written to
/etc/default/locale and /etc/environment also for KDE users. I'm
suggesting that also LC_MESSAGES is written to those files, and so far I
have assumed that that change would at least not be a problem for KDE.
Are you able to tell whether my assumption is correct?

> Thanks for taking over the language-selector development, btw. ;)

Well, that's not exactly what I'm doing. Don't consider myself qualified
for such a commitment. So far my goal has been to help solve the issues
in this bug report.

I'd be happy to keep contributing as a member of some formal or informal
l-s team, though. Your participation in such a team on a volunteer, less
demanding basis would be much appreciated.

Best regards,

Gunnar

-- 
Set $LANGUAGE if the user picks a different locale in gdm, so that language-selector and gdm stop disagreeing
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/553162
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Status in GDM: The Gnome Display Manager: New
Status in Ubuntu Translations: Triaged
Status in “gdm” package in Ubuntu: In Progress
Status in “language-selector” package in Ubuntu: In Progress

Bug description:
Binary package hint: gdm

This is a follow-up to bug 407300, which has been fixed but a separate issue remains. I'm opening a separate task for language-selector, as it refers to the interaction between it and gdm.

The problem is basically that GDM seems to always override the LANG values set by language selector, and quite easily one can get to a situation where LANGUAGE and LANG differ and the desktop is a mixture of two languages.

Steps to reproduce (a):

 * New install, choosing Catalan in the installer
 * I log in without doing any changes to the language in GDM
 * I start System > Administration > Language support
 * I choose English there
 * I log out
 * I log back in without doing any changes in the GDM language chooser
 * My session is half English and half Catalan due to LANGUAGE=en and LANG=ca_ES.utf8 (Firefox in Catalan, gnome-panel in English, gnome-menus in Catalan).

Steps to reproduce (b):

 * Perform a full installation in English, as per http://testcases.qa.ubuntu.com/Install/NonEnglishLanguage#Installation%20Full%20Network%20Support
 * Go to System > Administration > Language Support
 * Install the Traditional Chinese language
 * Bring Traditional Chinese to the top of the list to become the main desktop language
 * Press the "Apply System-wide..." button
 * Reboot
 * When entering the session, you'll notice the desktop half translated in English, half in Chinese. The most noticeable parts shown in English are all the menus and Firefox. These applications seem to ignore the LANGUAGE variable
 * Running 'locale' on the terminal shows that LANG=en_US.UTF-8 and LANGUAGE=zh_K:en_US:en

I understand that this might be a problem in each application, as they should give LANGUAGE preference. Rather than filing a bug in each app right now, would it not make more sense to ensure that at least the first locale in LANGUAGE, the one in LANG and LC_MESSAGES are the same? (assuming it is possible to do such a thing, of course).

Also see the related bug 552664