Re: [gentoo-dev] UTF-8 locale by default

[Kent Fredric]

On 31 July 2012 05:33, Michael Orlitzky <michael@××××××××.com> wrote:
> On 07/30/12 12:28, Michał Górny wrote:
>>
>> My point here is that you want the thing to change. So you first try to
>> convince people here to change. We practically did a small survey here
>> and in the result we didn't agree on doing the change.
>>
>> So you're saying we should do another survey on another group, hoping
>> that this time the result will be on your side.
>
> We didn't do a survey, we asked,
>
>   "Is there a reason for not using at least en_US.UTF-8 as a "sane"
>    default value?"
>
> Unsurprisingly, the responses contained reasons for not using
> en_US.UTF-8 as the default.
>

I think its a shame that :

1. the current handbook way to change timezone is manually editing a file.
2. the handbook doesn't mention `eselect locale`
3. `eselect locale list` is useless if you have *all* locales available to you.
4. `eselect locale` can only set the LANG variable.
5. that eselect doesn't have an interactive mode yet.

Why? because this problem could be made simpler by providing a way to
use a recommended locale for your timezone, which is likely to yield a
more sane default for that timezone.

It would also make it easier to validate the value the user chooses
for their Timezone value.

Consider:

eselect timezone list
 # all level 1 timezones + groups , ie: like ls /usr/share/zoneinfo
eselect timezone list  America/
# contents of /usr/share/zoneinfo/America
eselect timezone set America/Chicago
# /etc/timezone is updated to  'America/Chicago'
# /etc/localtime is replaced with /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Chicago
eselect locale set --all auto
# LANG and LC_* are set using the values defined as "default" for
America/Chicago
eselect locale set --ctype auto
# Only LC_CTYPE is autopopulated.
eselect locale list
# 600 items because you have a vanilla locale.defs
eselect locale list --timezone
# shows a list of LOCALE values for the current TZ, with the one that
would be used as default first/marked up differently
eselect locale list en
# shows english locale options
eselect locale set --ctype en_US.utf8


The benefits of setting these locales this way are obvious to me at
least, you can set locales to a value that is sensible automatically.
You also can validate a users choice of locale and provide feedback,
such as, you can list non-installed locales, and then tell the user if
thy try to use a locale that isn't installed yet they need to update
locales.def

The only way I can suggest something better, would be an interactive
locale setter, something like 'tzselect' , except sets timezone *and*
locale information, with the ability to automatically update
locales.def and add new locale definitions and regenerate the locale
database.

This way, you could have a selection process more like this:

https://gist.github.com/3240866

#? 1

The following information has been given:

United States
Eastern Time

Therefore TZ='America/New_York' will be used.
Local time is now: Thu Aug 2 17:33:17 EDT 2012.
Universal Time is now: Thu Aug 2 21:33:17 UTC 2012.
Is the above information OK?
1) Yes
2) No
#? 1
Your Current locale settings are:

    LANG="POSIX"

The recommended settings for your locale are :
    LANG="en_US.utf8"
    LC_CTYPE="en_US.utf8"

Do you wish to change your locale settings at this time?
1) No
2) Yes - Use recommended settings
3) Yes - Configure locale interactively.

At least this way, the effort required to configure your system into a
very good logical UTF8 default is trivial.

-- 
Kent

perl -e  "print substr( \"edrgmaM  SPA NOcomil.ic\\@tfrken\", \$_ * 3,
3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );"

http://kent-fredric.fox.geek.nz