Re: National Language Support Functions

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2006 14:03:45 +0100
> From: "Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <address@hidden>
> Cc: 
> 
> We never made any decision on this issue. Most of the answers pointed to 
> that GetUserDefaultUILanguage is the correct function to use. Or am I 
> just misinterpreting to confirm what I said at the beginning ;-)

My conclusion is different.  I think we do use the correct interface:

   GetLocaleInfo (LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT, LOCALE_SABBREVLANGNAME ...

This queries the OS about the user-selected _language_ in the current
locale, so it's supposed to be akin to the Posix LANG parameter.
However, Microsoft have their i18n API hopelessly messed up, in that
they have too many different language-related settings, their mapping
to the related APIs is confusing and under-documented, and the
associated guidelines change with every Windows version (the clear
sign of the latter is that each new Windows version introduces another
bunch of new functions that return the language).

At least one user of those who reported the results of your program
(Jason) would be hurt by going to GetUserDefaultUILanguage.  Also,
that API returns a language that cannot be easily changed, unlike the
language that we currently return (see above).

So my conclusion is that we should leave things as they are.  If it
annoys you that your system brings you the wrong tutorial, you can
either change the Windows language settings, or simply request the
tutorial in any language you like, with "C-u C-h t".