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
French
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hungarian
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Lithuanian
Polish
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 some of the 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. 

ca_ES.ISO8859-1
Catalan locale for Spain

cs_CZ.ISO8859-2
Czech locale for Czech Republic

da_DK.ISO8859-1
Danish locale for Denmark

de_CH.ISO8859-1
German locale for Switzerland

de_DE.ISO8859-1
German locale for Germany

el_GR.ISO8859-7
Greek locale for Greece

en_GB.ISO8859-1
English locale 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
Spanish locale for Spain

fi_FI.ISO8859-1
Finnish locale for Finland

fr_BE.ISO8859-1
French locale for Belgium

fr_CA.ISO8859-1
French locale for Canada

fr_CH.ISO8859-1
French locale for Switzerland

fr_FR.ISO8859-1
French locale for France

hu_HU.ISO8859-2
Hungarian locale for Hungary

is_IS.ISO8859-1
Icelandic locale for Iceland

it_IT.ISO8859-1
Italian locale 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
Dutch locale for Belgium

nl_NL.ISO8859-1
Dutch locale for the Netherlands

no_NO.ISO8859-1
Norwegian locale for Norway

pl_PL.ISO8859-2
Polish locale for Poland

pt_PT.ISO8859-1
Portugese locale 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
Swedish locale 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. 

For most languages and countries, there are corresponding @ucs4 locale variants available for use by applications that require internal process code to be in UCS4 format. The universal.utf8@ucs4 locale is also available to support the complete set of characters in the Universal Character Set (UCS). Refer to Unicode(5) for more information on language- and country-specific @ucs4 variants and the universal.utf8@ucs4 locale. 

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. 

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), 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