Language selection

[Jaap Winius]

Quoting Alex Baer <comet.friend at gmx.net>:

> ... Currently I am using a ~/.profile with just one line:
>
> LANG=de_DE.UTF-8

I've experimented with that, but for some reason my results have not  
been as consistent as with a ~/.dmrc file containing:

[Desktop]
Session=default
Language=nl_NL.UTF-8

If I want English again, I can delete just that last line, or the  
whole file. Actually, I believe there are plans to end support for  
~/.dmrc in favor of some file in ~/.config/ or whatever -- details,  
anyone? -- but perhaps I'll get lucky and never have to deal with that.

> But this is not a viable end-user solution, as it requires to
> edit a file and to know the exact syntax. A GUI option in the
> settings dialog would be much more comfortable.

Completely agree. If they make it impossible for me to keep running  
gdm in wheezy as I still do, then I'll probably write a little bash  
shell script, using zenity for GUI dialog boxes, to allow the users to  
change the language back and forth when they wish.

> The perfect approach, IMHO, is how it's done in KDE. As an end-users I can
> easily configure my desktop according to my locale, and will get German
> application UIs and correct currency and date formats. But at the same time,
> when I switch user to root, I still get US English messages, when a command
> returns an error. This is good, because it is much easier to find help on the
> web for US English messages than for, e. g., German messages.

For error messages, Dutch is even less useful. I'm afraid that I will  
always be severely opposed to using anything else other than English  
for the root environment. Unfortunately, it would seem that most of  
the greeter developers are unaware that any sysadmins would want to  
work this way.

Cheers,

Jaap