Andrew:

> Jonathan, do you have any idea what may be at fault here?
> I'm interested in filing this upstream but I'm not sure which Gnome package 
> to target.

The more I look at this, the more I think there may well be no real bug
here at all.

My change to the summary line was trying (apparently inadequately, since
you undid it!) to suggest that the issue is not really "locale settings
not respected by Gnome".  Locale settings most definitely *are*
respected by Gnome, when they are set in /etc/environment, or when set
from the gdm login screen.  I have multiple languages installed on this
machine (English, French, German and Spanish), and I can log in using
any one of them, and get appropriate menus, and clock date/time format,
spell checking, etc.  Locales *are* being respected.  Unlike English,
French, German and Spanish, I don't speak any Egyptian Arabic, so I've
not tried logging in in that language :)

Rephrasing a bit: the issue being reported is (as I understand it, and
now we are clear that refdoc's locale issue is clearly not a part of
this specific issue): Gnome does not use locale settings which are set
in the user's shell initialization file.

The question then becomes: Should Gnome in fact examine and use such
settings, since Gnome does not itself necessarily use any per-session
shell at all!  Why would Gnome be expected to look in a user's shell
initialization file?  Is there documentation out there that says it
should or will do so?

Especially since Ubuntu 8.10 has the "fast session switching"
capability, allowing one to have multiple sessions open (logged in as
different users) in different locales, I am not sure there is really
much of a case for saying that Gnome *should* be parsing shell
initialization files to look for locale settings -- is there?  I'm open
to hearing the argument that it should really do that, but trying to
look at this from the user's viewpoint, I don't (yet?) see why it
should.

The shell respects the locale settings set in the global environment and
its initialization file(s); Gnome respects the locale settings in the
global environment and it is own initialization files.  (For example,
have you considered setting locale-related variables in ~/.xsession, if
you want to explore this kind of thing?  Maybe in ~/.dmrc ??)

Logically, if you are using a GUI, then you set its locale at GUI
session startup, just as you would set a shell's locale at shell
startup.  Each has a different way to specify its initial settings
(though of course both respect the global environment).

Does this make sense?

Jonathan

-- 
Locale settings not used by GNOME session
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/306591
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