Ienup Sung wrote:
> 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.
Personally, I think that's a mistake, but I also recognize that project
team has thought about this (and particularly the performance
implications from opening and parsing a file), and I'm satisfied enough
that I'll give this project my +1.
- Garrett
>
> Ienup
