https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39325

Mike Kaganski <[email protected]> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|NEEDINFO                    |RESOLVED
         Resolution|---                         |INVALID
           See Also|                            |https://bugs.documentfounda
                   |                            |tion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12
                   |                            |4992

--- Comment #28 from Mike Kaganski <[email protected]> ---
I close this bug INVALID, as unanswered.

First of all, some background.

1. LibreOffice, *by default*, shows its UI in the language that the system uses
for its UI, with a fallback of en-US.

2. LibreOffice *always* tries to show help *in the same language as its UI
language*. If it finds local help *in that language*, it will show it;
otherwise, it will try to open that language help from Internet. It will never
try to show help in any other language, even when you have those languages
installed locally. There is a special case for en-US, but that fallback will be
used online, when help in completely unavailable in some specific language;
that fallback is unrelated to the topic here.

That problem created much confusion in users over the years. People had an
expectation, that simply downloading and installing *any* help pack would tell
LibreOffice to use that help pack. That is not completely unreasonable
expectation; but that's not how LibreOffice work. Users didn't realize that
installing a help pack in a given language simply added that language to the
locally installed set, which *only* allowed LibreOffice to find that help, *if
and only if* LibreOffice itself used that language as its UI language.

Since that was such a problem, as many questions fined on Ask LibreOffice
demonstrate, a FAQ was created [1]. Of course, that didn't help much. Then, the
message displayed to user when the offline help was not found was clarified to
explicitly mention the exact language it was looking for, to help the user
realize which language to download. Also, our Help->About evolved to include
the UI language, so that when user copies data from there, and pastes to bug
report (or on a forum), it helps to spot the mismatch, and help the user.

Bug 124992 suggests to drop the lunacy of having separate help packages per UI
language, which imagines to "help" users from "bloat", at the expense of users
having constant problems. The idea that disk space savings are more important
that user comfort is simply a nightmarish misconception. If you can save people
from suffering by using a gigabyte of space, it is worth it.

3. Now for something else. There was a change in version 6.0, when LibreOffice
offline help was changed from "wikihelp" to HTML. That meant, that *offline*
help is now shown in web browser. Some people didn't realize, that the browser
shows that offline content, and imagined that opening browser indicated that
offline help wasn't recognized. That idea was wrong, and likely was reflected
in comment 26.

Now for specific bugs.

This bug 39325, as per comment 2, seems to be NOTABUG at all: it hints, that
johnalovely's system used en-AU locale, and *likely* also corresponding UI
language, which explains why they had LibreOffice UI set to something different
from en-UK.

Bugs marked as duplicates:

Bug 50606 does not mention the system settings at all; likely it is truly a
duplicate.

Bug 60863 seem to claim that a clean installation of LibreOffice on a Windows
system, with system *locale* set to en-GB, would show LibreOffice UI in en-US.
The term "locale" is explicitly used there; and if it refers to what is set in
Windows' Regional settings (intl.cpl), as opposed to the system UI language,
then it's also truly a duplicate for this bug, because system *locale* does not
define the UI language of LibreOffice, as opposed to system UI language. I
tested myself locally, that having the *system UI language* set to en-GB will
correctly set LibreOffice UI language to en-GB - so that should work as
designed.

Bug 63637 is a true duplicate, clearly indicating that their system is French,
so unless they explicitly set their LibreOffice UI to en-GB, local help in that
language would not be used.

Bug 68722 is unclear; the system UI language, as well as LibreOffice UI
language, was never mentioned there.

[1]
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Faq/General/Offline_Help_pack_must_match_UI_language

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