non UTF-8 locale / Gtk / non Gtk app / filenames with accents

[Eric SCHAEFFER]

Hi,

I'm french, and Ubuntu installed itself with a latin1 locale (fr_FR
ISO-8859-1).
Ok, that can be fine (there's also a fr_FR.UTF-8 locale, or a
ISO-8859-15 locale, fr_FR at euro).
But : GTK treat filename by default as UTF-8 encoded strings (at least
for relases before 2.6, and it seems to be still the case), unless you
export a environment variable (I don't remember exactly the name).

So, Firebird and OpenOffice, witch aren't GTK apps, use the system
locale to read/write filenames, and don't use UTF-8 because the locale
isn't an UTF-8 locale...
What a pitty that filenames encoding is controlled by the locale, but
it's that way.

1/ What is the name of the environment variable ?

2/ Ubuntu team should do something (Firebird and OpenOffice aren't in
universe ;)

Eric

PS :
Before I install Ubuntu, I was under Debian sid, with fr_FR.UTF-8 at euro
locale. All works fine, except for console program output (they usually
don't support UTF-8, specially debconf ;). 
I think the better solution for me and Ubuntu would be to export the
environment variable...