Language selection -- acceptable solution

[Jaap Winius]

Quoting Lorenzo Sutton <lorenzofsutton at gmail.com>:

> ...
> At this point when at the slim logion you press F1 it should cycle  
> the entries in sessions including your newly created startxfce4-nl  
> (or whatever you called it), and starting that the locale settings  
> should be for NL_nl.

Thank you very much, Lorenzo!

Following your instructions, the only thing I changed initially was to  
add some export statements in /usr/bin/startxfce4-nl like this:

export LANG="nl_NL.utf8"
export LANGUAGE="nl_NL.utf8"
export LC_CTYPE="nl_NL.UTF-8"

After that it worked as you described, although this solution does  
have one serious disadvantage: since the default language is still  
English (which I do not intend to change) users who want Dutch are  
forced to change their session language every time they log in. This  
is unlike gdm, where it's only necessary to select a language once if  
you make it your default.

However, your idea looked so promising that I decided not to abandon  
it, but make some improvements to it instead. First, I added the  
following code to the beginning of /usr/bin/startxfce4 itself (not to  
a copy with a different name):

== BEGIN ============================================

WD=`/bin/pwd`
FILE="$WD/.dmrc"

if [ $0 == "/usr/bin/Nederlands" ]
then
         export LANG="nl_NL.utf8"
         export LANGUAGE="nl_NL.utf8"
         export LC_CTYPE="nl_NL.UTF-8"

         /bin/echo "[Desktop]"                   >  $FILE
         /bin/echo "Session=default"             >> $FILE
         /bin/echo "Language=nl_NL.UTF-8"        >> $FILE

elif [ $0 == "/usr/bin/English" ]
then
         export LANG="en_GB.utf8"
         export LANGUAGE="en_GB.utf8"
         export LC_CTYPE="en_GB.UTF-8"

         /bin/echo "[Desktop]"                   >  $FILE
         /bin/echo "Session=default"             >> $FILE
         /bin/echo "Language=en_GB.UTF-8"        >> $FILE
else
         if [ -f $FILE ]
         then
                 LNG=`/bin/grep Language $FILE`

                 if [[ $LNG =~ "en_GB" ]]
                 then
                         export LANG="en_GB.utf8"
                         export LANGUAGE="en_GB.utf8"
                         export LC_CTYPE="en_GB.UTF-8"

                 elif [[ $LNG =~ "nl_NL" ]]
                 then
                         export LANG="nl_NL.utf8"
                         export LANGUAGE="nl_NL.utf8"
                         export LC_CTYPE="nl_NL.UTF-8"
                 fi
         else
                 export LANG="nl_NL.utf8"
                 export LANGUAGE="nl_NL.utf8"
                 export LC_CTYPE="nl_NL.UTF-8"

                 /bin/echo "[Desktop]"                   >  $FILE
                 /bin/echo "Session=default"             >> $FILE
                 /bin/echo "Language=nl_NL.UTF-8"        >> $FILE
         fi
fi

== END ==============================================

More improvements are possible, but this basically does the trick.  
Next, I created two aliases:

   ~# ln -s /usr/bin/startxfce4 /usr/bin/English
   ~# ln -s /usr/bin/startxfce4 /usr/bin/Nederlands

Last, I modified the sessions statement in /etc/slim.conf so that it  
now reads:

   sessions            English,Nederlands

The code in startxfce4 effectively sets the default Xfce session to  
Dutch if there is no ~/.dmrc file that contains a reference to one of  
the two supported languages. Toggling F1 allows users to select either  
English or Dutch again (Nederlands), after which a ~/.dmrc file is  
created and set to that language.

Note that the language setting is saved in the ~/.dmrc file every time  
F1 is used to select a language. If ~/.dmrc did not exist previously,  
it is always created and set with either the selected language or  
default language. This has nothing to do with the default language for  
the OS, which is still set to 'none' (or 'C'), i.e. English.

Compared to gmd on Debian squeeze, the only disadvantage of this  
solution (besides the fact that it's a hack) is that when English is  
selected and an attempt is made to log in, but a wrong password is  
given, the selected language (session) reverts to the default when the  
greeter is reset for the next login attempt. This is not an issue with  
gdm, which unlike slim stays with the selected language, but it seems  
a small price to pay for the advantage of no longer having to bother  
with a package that is not part of wheezy.

Cheers,

Jaap