On 31 July 2012 05:33, Michael Orlitzky <mich...@orlitzky.com> wrote: > On 07/30/12 12:28, Michał Górny wrote: >> >> My point here is that you want the thing to change. So you first try to >> convince people here to change. We practically did a small survey here >> and in the result we didn't agree on doing the change. >> >> So you're saying we should do another survey on another group, hoping >> that this time the result will be on your side. > > We didn't do a survey, we asked, > > "Is there a reason for not using at least en_US.UTF-8 as a "sane" > default value?" > > Unsurprisingly, the responses contained reasons for not using > en_US.UTF-8 as the default. >
I think its a shame that : 1. the current handbook way to change timezone is manually editing a file. 2. the handbook doesn't mention `eselect locale` 3. `eselect locale list` is useless if you have *all* locales available to you. 4. `eselect locale` can only set the LANG variable. 5. that eselect doesn't have an interactive mode yet. Why? because this problem could be made simpler by providing a way to use a recommended locale for your timezone, which is likely to yield a more sane default for that timezone. It would also make it easier to validate the value the user chooses for their Timezone value. Consider: eselect timezone list # all level 1 timezones + groups , ie: like ls /usr/share/zoneinfo eselect timezone list America/ # contents of /usr/share/zoneinfo/America eselect timezone set America/Chicago # /etc/timezone is updated to 'America/Chicago' # /etc/localtime is replaced with /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Chicago eselect locale set --all auto # LANG and LC_* are set using the values defined as "default" for America/Chicago eselect locale set --ctype auto # Only LC_CTYPE is autopopulated. eselect locale list # 600 items because you have a vanilla locale.defs eselect locale list --timezone # shows a list of LOCALE values for the current TZ, with the one that would be used as default first/marked up differently eselect locale list en # shows english locale options eselect locale set --ctype en_US.utf8 The benefits of setting these locales this way are obvious to me at least, you can set locales to a value that is sensible automatically. You also can validate a users choice of locale and provide feedback, such as, you can list non-installed locales, and then tell the user if thy try to use a locale that isn't installed yet they need to update locales.def The only way I can suggest something better, would be an interactive locale setter, something like 'tzselect' , except sets timezone *and* locale information, with the ability to automatically update locales.def and add new locale definitions and regenerate the locale database. This way, you could have a selection process more like this: https://gist.github.com/3240866 #? 1 The following information has been given: United States Eastern Time Therefore TZ='America/New_York' will be used. Local time is now: Thu Aug 2 17:33:17 EDT 2012. Universal Time is now: Thu Aug 2 21:33:17 UTC 2012. Is the above information OK? 1) Yes 2) No #? 1 Your Current locale settings are: LANG="POSIX" The recommended settings for your locale are : LANG="en_US.utf8" LC_CTYPE="en_US.utf8" Do you wish to change your locale settings at this time? 1) No 2) Yes - Use recommended settings 3) Yes - Configure locale interactively. At least this way, the effort required to configure your system into a very good logical UTF8 default is trivial. -- Kent perl -e "print substr( \"edrgmaM SPA NOcomil.ic\\@tfrken\", \$_ * 3, 3 ) for ( 9,8,0,7,1,6,5,4,3,2 );" http://kent-fredric.fox.geek.nz
