Re: supporting obscure languages

[Bruno Haible]

Eric Blake wrote:
> >> b. The "C" locale is not UTF-8. (this need not be the case)
> >
> > The "C" locale was defined at a time when there was no UTF-8. This
> > choice accommodates for output devices that cannot display arbitrary
> > Unicode characters (think of ssh into an older Unix system).
> 
> But POSIX explicitly allows the "C" locale to use UTF-8, and in fact, that
> is the case on cygwin 1.7.

True. It's an implementation choice whether the "C" locale is in US-ASCII or
UTF-8. In glibc, you would only have to change 1 file: glibc/locale/C-ctype.c.
Or you can create a C.UTF-8 locale for yourself, using 'localedef'.

But it would not help Albert's problem: When the LC_MESSAGES locale is "C",
translations are disabled, regardless of the LANGUAGE environment variable.
This is required for POSIX compatibility of tools (such as "cp" or "tar")
which use gettext() for their internationalization.

Bruno