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Alphabetical
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l10n_intro(5)
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. See localedef(1),
charmap(4), and locale(4) for information about creating locales. See
Writing Software for the International Market for information about
creating locales and writing applications that use locales.
The current release of the operating system supports the following
languages with locales. Each language is discussed separately in its own
reference page.
Catalan
Chinese (Simplified and Traditional)
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English (discussed in this reference page)
Finnish
Flemish
French
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hungarian
Icelandic
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Lithuanian
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
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 certain languages.
The following list describes all the supported locales. For information
about the character encoding used by a particular locale, see the reference
page for the codeset specified in the last part of the locale name or, for
those that end in .UTF-8, see Unicode(5).
ca_ES.ISO8859-1
Catalan locale for Spain (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
ca_ES.ISO8859-15
Catalan locale for Spain (uses the Latin-9 codeset)
ca_ES.UTF-8
Catalan locale for Spain (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
cs_CZ.ISO8859-2
Czech locale for Czech Republic (uses the Latin-2 codeset)
cs_CZ.UTF-8
Czech locale for Czech Republic (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
da_DK.ISO8859-1
Danish locale for Denmark (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
da_DK.ISO8859-15
Danish locale for Denmark (uses the Latin-9 codeset)
da_DK.UTF-8
Danish locale for Denmark (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
de_CH.ISO8859-1
German locale for Switzerland (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
de_CH.ISO8859-15
German locale for Switzerland (uses the Latin-9 codeset)
de_CH.UTF-8
German locale for Switzerland (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
de_DE.ISO8859-1
German locale for Germany (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
de_DE.ISO8859-15
German locale for Germany (uses the Latin-9 codeset)
de_DE.UTF-8
German locale for Germany (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
el_GR.ISO8859-7
Greek locale for Greece (uses the ISO Greek codeset)
el_GR.UTF-8
Greek locale for Greece (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
en_EU.UTF-8@euro
English locale that includes the euro character (uses the UTF-8
codeset)
This locale both supports the euro character and defines the
decimal point as a comma (,) and the thousands separator as a
period (.). Therefore, this locale is useful in many European
countries, not just those for which English is the native language,
when assigned only to the LC_MONETARY locale category or
environment variable.
en_GB.ISO8859-1
English locale for Great Britain (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
en_GB.ISO8859-15
English locale for Great Britain (uses the Latin-9 codeset)
en_GB.UTF-8
English locale for Great Britain (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
en_US.ISO8859-1
English locale for the United States (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
en_US.ISO8859-15
English locale for the United States (uses the Latin-9 codeset)
en_US.cp850
English locale for the United States (uses cp850 encoding)
Use this locale with data that contains accented characters and
that was generated on a PC using 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.
en_US.UTF-8
English locale for the United States (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
en_US.UTF-8@euro
English locale for the United States (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
The @euro variant defines the local currency sign to be the euro
character and the international currency sign to be EUR. See also
en_EU.UTF-8@euro.
es_ES.ISO8859-1
Spanish locale for Spain (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
es_ES.ISO8859-15
Spanish locale for Spain (uses the Latin-9 codeset)
es_ES.UTF-8
Spanish locale for Spain (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
fi_FI.ISO8859-1
Finnish locale for Finland (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
fi_FI.ISO8859-15
Finnish locale for Finland (uses the Latin-9 codeset)
fi_FI.UTF-8
Finnish locale for Finland (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
fr_BE.ISO8859-1
French locale for Belgium (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
fr_BE.ISO8859-15
French locale for Belgium (uses the Latin-9 codeset)
fr_BE.UTF-8
French locale for Belgium (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
fr_CA.ISO8859-1
French locale for Canada (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
fr_CA.ISO8859-15
French locale for Canada (uses the Latin-9 codeset)
fr_CA.UTF-8
French locale for Canada (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
fr_CH.ISO8859-1
French locale for Switzerland (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
fr_CH.ISO8859-15
French locale for Switzerland (uses the Latin-9 codeset)
fr_CH.UTF-8
French locale for Switzerland (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
fr_FR.ISO8859-1
French locale for France (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
fr_FR.ISO8859-15
French locale for France (uses the Latin-9 codeset)
fr_FR.UTF-8
French locale for France (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
he_IL.ISO8859-8
Hebrew locale for Israel (uses the ISO Hebrew codeset)
hu_HU.ISO8859-2
Hungarian locale for Hungary (uses the Latin-2 codeset)
hu_HU.UTF-8
Hungarian locale for Hungary (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
is_IS.ISO8859-1
Icelandic locale for Iceland (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
is_IS.ISO8859-15
Icelandic locale for Iceland (uses the Latin-9 codeset)
is_IS.UTF-8
Icelandic locale for Iceland (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
it_IT.ISO8859-1
Italian locale for Italy (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
it_IT.ISO8859-15
Italian locale for Italy (uses the Latin-9 codeset)
it_IT.UTF-8
Italian locale for Italy (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
iw_IL.ISO8859-8
Hebrew locale for Israel (uses the ISO Hebrew codeset)
This locale name is supported for backward compatibility. The
recommended name to use for the ISO Hebrew locale is
he_IL.ISO8859-8.
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)
ja_JP.SJIS
Japanese locale for Japan (uses the Shift JIS codeset)
ja_JP.UTF-8
Japanese locale for Japan (uses the UTF-8 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)
ko_KR.UTF-8
Korean locale for Korea (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
lt_LT.ISO8859-4
Lithuanian locale for Lithuania (uses the Latin-4 codeset)
lt_LT.UTF-8
Lithuanian locale for Lithuania (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
nl_BE.ISO8859-1
Flemish locale for Belgium (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
nl_BE.ISO8859-15
Flemish locale for Belgium (uses the Latin-9 codeset)
nl_BE.UTF-8
Flemish locale for Belgium (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
nl_NL.ISO8859-1
Dutch locale for the Netherlands (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
nl_NL.ISO8859-15
Dutch locale for the Netherlands (uses the Latin-9 codeset)
nl_NL.UTF-8
Dutch locale for the Netherlands (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
no_NO.ISO8859-1
Norwegian locale for Norway (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
no_NO.ISO8859-15
Norwegian locale for Norway (uses the Latin-9 codeset)
no_NO.UTF-8
Norwegian locale for Norway (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
pl_PL.ISO8859-2
Polish locale for Poland (uses the Latin-2 codeset)
pl_PL.UTF-8
Polish locale for Poland (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
pt_PT.ISO8859-1
Portuguese locale for Portugal (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
pt_PT.ISO8859-15
Portuguese locale for Portugal (uses the Latin-9 codeset)
pt_PT.UTF-8
Portuguese locale for Portugal (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
ru_RU.ISO8859-5
Russian locale for Russia (uses the ISO Cyrillic codeset)
ru_RU.UTF-8
Russian locale for Russia (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
sk_SK.ISO8859-2
Slovak locale for Slovakia (uses the Latin-2 codeset)
sk_SK.UTF-8
Slovak locale for Slovakia (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
sl_SI.ISO8859-2
Slovene locale for Slovenia (uses the Latin-2 codeset)
sl_SI.UTF-8
Slovene locale for Slovenia (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
sv_SE.ISO8859-1
Swedish locale for Sweden (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
sv_SE.ISO8859-15
Swedish locale for Sweden (uses the Latin-9 codeset)
sv_SE.UTF-8
Swedish locale for Sweden (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
th_TH.TACTIS
Thai locale for Thailand (uses the TACTIS codeset)
tr_TR.ISO8859-9
Turkish locale for Turkey (uses the Latin-5 codeset)
tr_TR.UTF-8
Turkish locale for Turkey (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
zh_CN.dechanzi
Simplified Chinese locale for the People's Republic of China (uses
the DEC Hanzi codeset)
zh_CN.GBK
Simplified Chinese locale for the People's Republic of China (uses
the GBK codeset, an extension of the GB 2312-80 codeset)
zh_CN.GB18030
Simplified Chinese locale for the People's Republic of China (uses
the GB18030 codeset, which extends GBK by means of 4-byte encoding)
zh_CN.UTF-8
Simplified Chinese locale for the People's Republic of China (uses
the UTF-8 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_HK.UTF-8
Traditional Chinese locale for Hong Kong (uses the UTF-8 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)
zh_TW.UTF-8
Traditional Chinese locale for Taiwan (uses the UTF-8 codeset)
This locale supports Simplified Chinese as well as Traditional
Chinese.
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.
The .UTF-8 and .ISO8859-15 locales are the only locales that include the
euro monetary symbol in the coded character set. The *.UTF-8@euro locales
also define the local currency symbol to be the euro character and the
international currency symbol to be EUR. See euro(5) for more information
about the euro symbol and how it is supported.
You can use the -a option with the locale command to list all the locales
available on the system. The POSIX (or C) locale is always available
because it must exist on all systems that conform to The Open Group's UNIX
specifications. The POSIX locale is the default locale when locale
variables are not set.
Note
The dxterm terminal emulator does not support locales based on the
Unicode (UTF-8) or Latin-9 (ISO8859-15) codesets. Use dtterm, the
default terminal emulator for the Common Desktop Environment (CDE),
with locales based on the Latin-9 and UTF-8 codesets.
System Locales
When you install Worldwide Language Support, localization is supported by
two types of locales: Unicode locales and dense code locales.
Unicode locales conform to Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646 standards and use
UTF-32 as the wide character encoding. Under UTF-32 wide character
encoding, wchar_t values represent the same characters regardless of the
locale and, because Unicode standards prevail, implementation is consistent
across platforms.
Locales whose names end in .UTF-8 use file code and internal process code
(wchar_t encoding) defined in the ISO 10646 and Unicode standards.
Other, non-UTF-8 Unicode locales use traditional UNIX and proprietary
codesets for the file code while using UTF-32 as the internal process code.
A subset of these Unicode locales have a @ucs4 modifier; however, they are
the same as the locales without the @ucs4 modifier. The @ucs4 subset is
provided for backward compatibility and may be removed in the future. You
cannot select @ucs4 locales from the CDE login menu; you must specify the
locale name in the LANG environment variable.
The universal.UTF-8 locale is also available (for use by applications
rather than end users). It supports the complete set of characters in the
universal character set (UCS).
See Unicode(5) for more information about encoding formats.
For .UTF-8 locales, file code may include characters encoded in more than 1
byte; therefore, use these locales in applications that can process
multibyte data. Design new applications based on multibyte .UTF-8 locales,
which incorporate a large character repertoire, to enable the application
to expand future character support without changing the character set.
Dense code locales use dense code for wide character encoding to minimize
table size (that is, codepoints are assigned consecutively with no empty
positions). Under dense code locales, a wchar_t value for one locale may
not represent the same character in another locale and, thus, is locale
specific. Dense code locales are appropriate for applications that have no
dependencies on the internal process code or, because dense code locales
are slightly more efficient than Unicode locales, require better
performance.
All valid codepoints in multibyte character sets are mapped to valid
codepoints in Unicode, including unmapped codepoints that are mapped to
Unicode codepoints in the private use area. Thus, dense code locales are
equivalent to Unicode locales. In general, the same charmaps and locale
source can be used for Unicode and dense code locales. However, Unicode and
dense code characters that are not defined in the LC_COLLATE section may be
sorted differently.
A Unicode locale exists for each dense code locale. (However, not all
Unicode locales have a dense code version.) For Latin-1 locales
(ISO8859-1), the dense code and Unicode locales are identical because
Latin-1 characters are the same as the first 256 characters in Unicode.
The operating system also supports three UCS transformation formats (UTFs),
UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32, all of which are defined in the Unicode
standard. See Unicode(5) for a full description of Unicode, UCS-4, and the
transformation formats.
The Unicode locales are installed in /usr/i18n/lib/nls/ucsloc/. Dense code
locales are installed in /usr/i18n/lib/nls/loc/. A symbolic link,
/usr/i18n/lib/nls/dloc points to the system default locales. For example,
the Japanese locale filename, /usr/lib/nls/loc/ja_JP.eucJP, is a symbolic
link to /usr/i18n/lib/nls/dloc/ja_JP.eucJP, where /dloc is a symbolic link
to either /ucsloc for the Unicode version, or /loc for the dense code
version, of the Japanese locale. Keep in mind that the same locale name can
refer to a Unicode locale or to a dense code locale, depending on the
setting of the symbolic link. Thus, if running an application in a locale
is problematic, check the symbolic link.
Because Unicode locales use consistent values for characters in wchar_t
form, a default link to Unicode locales can increase consistency across
locales and platforms. However, some users may prefer the older, dense code
locales that use proprietary algorithms to convert characters to wchar_t
form, or an application may have dependencies on dense code wchar_t
encoding. To switch between Unicode and dense code locales, the system
administrator, as root, uses i18nconfig to change the systemwide default or
manually changes the symbolic link /usr/i18n/lib/nls/dloc from ./ucsloc to
./loc.
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. This
environment variable is not defined by current industry standards. See
iconv_intro(5), iconv_open(3), and setlocale(3) for more information.
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 can 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. See catopen(3) for detailed information on NLSPATH.
Customizing Locales
Partial source files, along with an associated Makefile, are available for
many locales in the /usr/lib/nls/loc/src directory. By editing one of these
source files and using the Makefile to rebuild the locale (make
locale_name), you can customize one or more of the following features:
· The format of affirmative and negative responses (LC_MESSAGES section)
· Rules and symbols for formatting monetary numeric information
(LC_MONETARY section)
· Rules and symbols for formatting nonmonetary numeric information
(LC_NUMERIC section)
· Rules and symbols for formatting date and time information (LC_TIME
section)
As described in locale(4), the LC_CTYPE and LC_COLLATE sections of these
locale sources are not customizable using this method. This means that you
cannot use one of these sources to change how characters are classified or
collated. By implication, this also means that you cannot add a new
character to a locale that does not already support it. For example, you
cannot add the European monetary character (euro) to a locale that does not
already support that character. However, you can edit the LC_MONETARY
section to define a string identifier for euro by using characters that the
locale does support. For example, you could replace the existing monetary
symbol with EUR.
See locale(4) for more information on a locale source file. See Writing
Software for the International Market for information on user customization
of LC_CTYPE and LC_COLLATE.
Caution
Customized versions of locales that are provided with the operating
system are not preserved when the operating system is reinstalled,
even when an update installation procedure is used. Therefore, you
must back up files for customized locales and their sources before
reinstalling the operating system. After the reinstallation is
complete, you must restore your customized locales to the system. If
the newly installed sources have revisions when compared to the old
sources, it might be preferable to apply your customizations to the
newly installed sources and rebuild your customized locales.
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), Dutch(5), eucJP(5), eucKR(5), eucTW(5), euro(5),
Finnish(5), French(5), GB18030(5), GBK(5) ,German(5), Greek(5), Hebrew(5),
Hungarian(5), i18n_intro(5), i18n_printing(5), Icelandic(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),
iso8859-15(5), Italian(5), Japanese(5), jiskanji(5), Korean(5),
Lithuanian(5), Norwegian(5), Polish(5), Portuguese(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
Using International Software
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Index for
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Alphabetical
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