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l10n_intro(5)
NAME
l10n_intro, l10n, locales, LOCPATH - Introduction to localization (L10N)
DESCRIPTION
Localization refers to the process of establishing information within a
computer system specific to each supported language, cultural data, and
coded character set (codeset) combination. Each such combination gives
rise to the definition of one locale. The abbreviation L10N is often used
to stand for localization as there are 10 characters between the beginning
"L" and the ending "N" of that word.
See i18n_intro(5) for introductory information about internationalization
and how to use system commands to set a locale. For information about
creating locales, refer to localedef(1), charmap(4), and locale(4). For
information about creating locales and writing applications that use
locales, refer to Writing Software for the International Market.
The current release of DIGITAL UNIX supports the following languages, each
of which is discussed separately in its own reference page:
Catalan
Chinese (Simplified and Traditional)
Czech
Finnish
French
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hungarian
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Lithuanian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Slovak
Slovene
Spanish
Swedish
Thai
Turkish
For some of the languages, more than one codeset and country or territory
are supported. Hence, multiple locales are supported for certain languages.
The following list names and describes all the supported locales. For
information about the character encoding used by a particular locale, refer
to the reference page for the codeset specified in the last part of the
locale name or, for those that end in .UTF-8, to Unicode(5).
ca_ES.ISO8859-1
Catalan locale for Spain
cs_CZ.ISO8859-2
Czech locale for Czech Republic
da_DK.ISO8859-1
da_DK.UTF-8
Danish locales for Denmark
de_CH.ISO8859-1
de_CH.UTF-8
German locales for Switzerland
de_DE.ISO8859-1
de_DE.UTF-8
German locales for Germany
el_GR.ISO8859-7
el_GR.UTF-8
Greek locales for Greece
en_GB.ISO8859-1
en_GB.UTF-8
English locales for Great Britain
en_US.ISO8859-1
English locale for U.S. (uses the ISO8859-1 codeset)
en_US.cp850
English locale for U.S. (uses cp850 character encoding)
Use this locale with data that contains accented characters and
that has been generated on a PC that uses the cp850 code page for
character encoding. This character encoding is usually the default
for the DOS and Windows operating systems in Europe. The
en_US.ISO8859-1 and en_US.cp850 locales encode English characters
the same way but use different values for accented and other non-
English characters in the Latin-1 character set.
es_ES.ISO8859-1
es_ES.UTF-8
Spanish locales for Spain
fi_FI.ISO8859-1
fi_FI.UTF-8
Finnish locales for Finland
fr_BE.ISO8859-1
fr_BE.UTF-8
French locales for Belgium
fr_CA.ISO8859-1
French locale for Canada
fr_CH.ISO8859-1
fr_CH.UTF-8
French locales for Switzerland
fr_FR.ISO8859-1
fr_FR.UTF-8
French locales for France
hu_HU.ISO8859-2
Hungarian locale for Hungary
is_IS.ISO8859-1
Icelandic locale for Iceland
it_IT.ISO8859-1
it_IT.UTF-8
Italian locales for Italy
iw_IL.ISO8859-8
Hebrew locale for Israel
ja_JP.SJIS
Japanese locale for Japan (uses the Shift JIS codeset)
ja_JP.deckanji
Japanese locale for Japan (uses the DEC Kanji codeset)
ja_JP.eucJP
Japanese locale for Japan (uses the Japanese EUC codeset)
ja_JP.sdeckanji
Japanese locale for Japan (uses the Super DEC Kanji codeset)
ko_KR.deckorean
Korean locale for Korea (uses the DEC Korean codeset)
ko_KR.eucKR
Korean locale for Korea (uses the Korean EUC codeset)
lt_LT.ISO8859-4
Lithuanian locale for Lithuania
nl_BE.ISO8859-1
nl_BE.UTF-8
Dutch locales for Belgium
nl_NL.ISO8859-1
nl_NL.UTF-8
Dutch locales for the Netherlands
no_NO.ISO8859-1
no_NO.UTF-8
Norwegian locales for Norway
pl_PL.ISO8859-2
Polish locale for Poland
pt_PT.ISO8859-1
pt_PT.UTF-8
Portugese locales for Portugal
ru_RU.ISO8859-5
Russian locale for Russia
sk_SK.ISO8859-2
Slovak locale for Slovakia
sl_SI.ISO8859-2
Slovene locale for Slovenia
sv_SE.ISO8859-1
sv_SE.UTF-8
Swedish locales for Sweden
th_TH.TACTIS
Thai locale for Thailand
tr_TR.ISO8859-9
Turkish locale for Turkey
zh_CN.dechanzi
Simplified Chinese locale for the People's Republic of China (uses
the DEC Hanzi codeset)
zh_HK.big5
Traditional Chinese locale for Hong Kong (uses the BIG-5 codeset)
zh_HK.dechanyu
Traditional Chinese locale for Hong Kong (uses the DEC Hanyu
codeset)
zh_HK.dechanzi
Simplified Chinese locale for Hong Kong (uses the DEC Hanzi codeset
zh_HK.eucTW
Traditional Chinese locale for Hong Kong (uses the Taiwanese EUC
codeset)
zh_TW.big5
Traditional Chinese locale for Taiwan (uses the BIG-5 codeset)
zh_TW.dechanyu
Traditional Chinese locale for Taiwan (uses the DEC Hanyu codeset)
zh_TW.eucTW
Traditional Chinese locale for Taiwan (uses the Taiwanese EUC
codeset)
For the zh_CN.dechanzi locale, the @pinyin, @radical, and @stroke variants
are available for sorting by pinyin, radical, and stroke, respectively. For
the zh_TW.big5, zh_TW.dechanyu, and zh_TW.eucTW locales, the @chuyin,
@radical, and @stroke variants are available for sorting by chuyin,
radical, and stroke, respectively. These variant locale names (those
including the @collation_modifier suffix) are available for assignment to
the LC_COLLATE variable.
The locales whose names end in .UTF-8, support file code and internal
process code according to the ISO 10646 and Unicode standards. The
universal.UTF-8 locale is also available to support the complete set of
characters in the Universal Character Set (UCS). These locales are also the
only ones that support the Euro (C=) monetary sign. (See the euro(5)
reference page.) For some locales that use traditional UNIX and proprietary
codesets, there are also corresponding @ucs4 locale variants available for
use by applications that require internal process code to be in UCS-4
format while file code remains in the format of the traditional UNIX or
proprietary codeset. Refer to Unicode(5) for more information about
encoding formats of the @ucs4 and .UTF-8 locales.
You can use the -a flag with the locale command to list all the locales
available on the system. Note that the POSIX locale is always available
because it must exist on all systems that conform to X/Open standards. The
POSIX (or C) locale is the default locale when locale variables are not
set.
Environment Variables Related to Localization
The following system environment variables can be set (usually only by
installed applications or by programmers who are testing applications or
converters under development) to override the default search path for
certain kinds of localized files:
LOCPATH
Specifies the search path for locales and codeset converters. Note
that this environment variable is not defined by current industry
standards. For more information, refer to the iconv_intro(5),
iconv_open(3), and setlocale(3) reference pages.
Because the LOCPATH variable is not defined by standards, it is
recommended for use only when testing locales or converters under
development and not as a systemwide method for finding installed
converters or locales. When you set LOCPATH, make sure that the search
path is valid for both locales and converters. Otherwise, application
and system software will be able to find only locales or only
converters in environments where both kinds of files are required.
NLSPATH
Specifies the search path for message catalogs, which contain
translated text for programs. This variable is used primarily by the
catopen() function. Refer to the catopen(3) reference page for detailed
information on NLSPATH.
Customizing Locales
Partial source files, along with an associated Makefile, are available for
many DIGITAL UNIX locales in the /usr/lib/nls/loc/src directory. By editing
one of these source files and using the Makefile to rebuild the locale
(make locale_name), you can customize one or more of the following
features:
· The format of affirmative and negative responses (LC_MESSAGES section)
· Rules and symbols for formatting monetary numeric information
(LC_MONETARY section)
· Rules and symbols for formatting nonmonetary numeric information
(LC_NUMERIC section)
· Rules and symbols for formatting date and time information (LC_TIME
section)
The LC_CTYPE and LC_COLLATE sections of these locale sources are not
customizable. This means that you cannot use one of these sources to change
how characters are classified or collated. By implication, this also means
that you cannot add a new character to a locale that does not already
support it. For example, you cannot add the European monetary symbol to a
locale that does not already support that character. In the case of the
Euro monetary symbol, you can edit the LC_MONETARY section to define a
string from characters that the locale does support to
For more information on a locale source file, see locale(4).
Caution
Customized versions of locales that are provided with the operating
system are not preserved when the operating system is reinstalled,
even when an update installation procedure is used. Therefore, it is
important to back up files for customized locales and their sources
before reinstalling the operating system. After the reinstallation is
complete, you will need to restore the customized locales to the
system.
SEE ALSO
Commands: locale(1), localedef(1)
Functions: catopen(3)
Files: charmap(4), locale(4)
Others: Catalan(5), Chinese(5), Czech(5), dechanyu(5), dechanzi(5),
deckanji(5), deckorean(5), eucJP(5), eucKR(5), eucTW(5), euro(5),
French(5), German(5), Greek(5), Hebrew(5), Hungarian(5), i18n_intro(5),
i18n_printing(5), iconv_intro(5), iso2022(5), iso2022jp(5), iso8859-1(5),
iso8859-2(5), iso8859-4(5), iso8859-5(5), iso8859-7(5), iso8859-8(5),
iso8859-9(5), Italian(5), Japanese(5), jiskanji(5), Korean(5),
Lithuanian(5), Polish(5), Russian(5), sbig5(5), sdeckanji(5), shiftjis(5),
Slovak(5), Slovene(5), Spanish(5), Swedish(5), TACTIS(5), telecode(5)
Thai(5), Turkish(5), Unicode(5)
Writing Software for the International Market