Nicolas Williams wrote at 11/02/09 08:52: > If Linux makes locale aliases configurable, then we should consider > doing the same. Locale names/aliases are best not picked by users, not > randomly anyways, but given the history here, I think letting users > configure locale aliases is fine. We should also consider hardcoding > common alias canonicalization algorightms such as "fold up the case of > the codeset name component of the locale". > > It's fine, IMO, to "compile" a locale alias DB so that a quick index > operation can be used (whether an ELF symbol table, a directory, or a > sorted list of fixed-sized entries). Making the user run some command > to update the locale alias DB seems fine.
I believe that the /etc/locale.alias specific to Debian distribution is not user configurable per se or there are tools being provided for user customization. If the alias mappings are going to be frequently updated then we might need to have an external file or two but when the update of the alias mappings are not that frequent, having mmap()'ng and optional parsing of the tables appear not so ideal. Furthermore, we do already have plenty of mappings with the current locale alias mappings shown at the locale_alias(5) plus codeset part normalization as described in the same man page that will last quite long time for us. If there will be a need to update the alias mappings one way or another, I think it will be much easier and economic for us to do the update as a minor bug fix level change of the mappings. > If aliases are configured, then locale(1) should have an option to list > them. If aliases are algorithmically determined then there may not be a > way to list them all, but a locale(1) option to determine whether a > given locale name is valid and what its canonical form is, would be > nice. Presumably running "LC_ALL=<alias> locale" would show the > canonicalized locale names in its output. It is part algorithmically determined with this project as specified in the locale_alias(5) man page since that's the way it appears glibc understands locale name aliases. At this point, the project team does not propose the have the locale alias mappings user customizable. Ienup
