bug#39080: How do language packs work?

[Julien Lepiller]

Le Fri, 10 Jan 2020 22:58:35 -0600,
Caleb Herbert <address@hidden> a écrit :

> On 1/10/20 10:31 PM, Julien Lepiller wrote:
> > Thanks for your interest in localisation! I'm unfortunately unable
> > to find a language code for your language. That is necessary for
> > software to recognise it and speak it. I may not have searched
> > correctly, so maybe you can find the correct code?  
> 
> pdc
> 
> Examples:
> https://pdc.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haaptblatt
> https://www.jw.org/pdc/
> https://iso639-3.sil.org/code/pdc

Great! For some reason I couldn't find this information.

> 
> > Once you have that code, you can use it in the guix system in the
> > locale field of your os declaration. If you are on a foreign
> > distro, then check with them how to set a language (or set $LANG
> > temporarily).  
> 
> I highly doubt a locale file for pdc_US exists.  I'd like to make one,
> but the file for en_US and yi_US don't show the actual characters.  I
> just see "<U####>", which I can't read or produce.
> 
> > To help translate guix, please have a look at the translation
> > project: https://translation-project.org  

ah indeed, glibc doesn't seem to have a locale definition for pdc. We
can't really do anything about this ourselves, but you should
definitely talk to the glibc folks, they'll know what you need to
create and contribute locale data.

For the time being, you can generate a locale definition by using
another locale's definition. It's a bit cheating, but if your language
is close enough to American English, here's what you could do with the
guix system:

(locale "pdc_US.UTF-8")
(locale-definitions
  (cons (locale-definition
          (name "pdc_US.UTF-8") (source "en_US"))
        %default-locale-definitions))

It creates a copy of the American English definition and calls it pdc.
This will allow you to use that locale, although its definition is
probably not correct.

> 
> Thanks.