Bug#864480: why is en_DK included but not en_DE?

[Marc Haber]

Package: locales
Version: 2.24-11
Severity: wishlist

Hi,

frankly, I don't have a clue whether I am filing this against the
correct package or whether I would need to talk to some (which?)
upstream for this, but maybe you can point me in the correct direction
if I am wrong here.

I am a native speaker of German, living in Germany. And I do detest
software translated to German since German translations of technical
terms are often clumsy. I would therefore love having my Debian in
English, but with German punctuation, collation order, monetary and date
display setting etc.

Since an en_DK exists, but no en_DE, I usually run my systems with en_DK
and correct the few differences between Danish and German customs
manually. This is, however, getting clumsy as well.

What do I do to bring a proper en_DE locale into Debian? I am willing to
do some work by trying to give a patch and to maintain it in the future.
Please advise what to do.

Greetings
Marc

[Samuel Thibault]

Hello,

Marc Haber, on ven. 09 juin 2017 10:57:12 +0200, wrote:
> frankly, I don't have a clue whether I am filing this against the
> correct package

No problem, we reassign :)

> I am a native speaker of German, living in Germany. And I do detest
> software translated to German since German translations of technical
> terms are often clumsy. I would therefore love having my Debian in
> English, but with German punctuation, collation order, monetary and date
> display setting etc.

So what you want is actually LC_LANG=de_DE LANGUAGE=en, right?

I guess this is what #842630 ("localechooser: Should support separating
language from localization") is about, then: no need for a new locale,
just a need for separating the language from the rest of the locale.
Otherwise we'd end up with a flurry of language/country combination,
that'd be unmaintainable.

Samuel

[Marc Haber]

On Fri, Jun 09, 2017 at 11:14:20AM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> Marc Haber, on ven. 09 juin 2017 10:57:12 +0200, wrote:
> > frankly, I don't have a clue whether I am filing this against the
> > correct package
>
> No problem, we reassign :)

Thanks!

> > I am a native speaker of German, living in Germany. And I do detest
> > software translated to German since German translations of technical
> > terms are often clumsy. I would therefore love having my Debian in
> > English, but with German punctuation, collation order, monetary and date
> > display setting etc.
>
> So what you want is actually LC_LANG=de_DE LANGUAGE=en, right?

If all software was correct, yes. I have a few programs from the GNOME
ecosystem that still insist on their German l10n with this setting.

I must admit that I have never fully understood all the locale stuff in
Unix :-(

> I guess this is what #842630 ("localechooser: Should support separating
> language from localization") is about, then: no need for a new locale,
> just a need for separating the language from the rest of the locale.

Yes, looks that way.

> Otherwise we'd end up with a flurry of language/country combination,
> that'd be unmaintainable.

I was just astonished that the Danish get the privilege, and ther
Germans dont.

Greetings
Marc
--
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[Aurelien Jarno]

This locale is there for historical reason. It has been added more than
20 years ago has a hack to provide "day, month, year" ordering, used in
most European countries except UK. DK has been chosen at that time. A
country from the Eurozone would probably have been better, but that was
not something really predictible at that time.

Aurelien

--
Aurelien Jarno GPG: 4096R/1DDD8C9B
aure...@aurel32.net http://www.aurel32.net

[Marc Haber]

On Fri, Jun 09, 2017 at 12:15:15PM +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 09, 2017 at 11:14:20AM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> > So what you want is actually LC_LANG=de_DE LANGUAGE=en, right?
>
> If all software was correct, yes. I have a few programs from the GNOME
> ecosystem that still insist on their German l10n with this setting.
>
> I must admit that I have never fully understood all the locale stuff in
> Unix :-(

I tried reading up on this again. Which man page should I read aside
from locale (5) and locale(7), which does explain a bunch of LC_foo, but
neither LC_LANG nor LANGUAGE?

[Samuel Thibault]

Marc Haber, on jeu. 15 juin 2017 18:07:07 +0200, wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 09, 2017 at 12:15:15PM +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
> > On Fri, Jun 09, 2017 at 11:14:20AM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> > > So what you want is actually LC_LANG=de_DE LANGUAGE=en, right?
> >
> > If all software was correct, yes. I have a few programs from the GNOME
> > ecosystem that still insist on their German l10n with this setting.
> >
> > I must admit that I have never fully understood all the locale stuff in
> > Unix :-(
>
> I tried reading up on this again. Which man page should I read aside
> from locale (5) and locale(7), which does explain a bunch of LC_foo, but
> neither LC_LANG nor LANGUAGE?

Sorry, LC_LANG was a typo, I should have written LANG.
LANGUAGE is documented in info gettext.

Samuel

[Marc Haber]

Control: tags -1
thanks

On Fri, Jun 09, 2017 at 11:14:20AM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:

> So what you want is actually LC_LANG=de_DE LANGUAGE=en, right?

After revisiting some ancient things still maked as unsolved in my
notes, I have been running my system with that setting for a couple of
years now and it reasonably seems to do the thing I expect it to.

Maybe it is asking too much to have a setting to have T.M.D. date format
but english monthh names ;-)

For me this issue can be closed if you agree.

Greetings
Marc