On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 06:59:44PM -0500, Vladimir Támara Patiño wrote:
> Regarding the situtation with other languages, in
> /usr/src/share/locale/ctype/Makefile I find the following languages
> with countries pointing all of them to the same cmap definitions:
> * de_AT, de_CH and de_DE
Taking this as an example, I do think that one German locale would
be enough, given that all these language variants use the exact same
character sets and written language looks the same everywhere (to me,
as a native speaker). There might be other differences, but these don't
matter for OpenBSD right now. OpenBSD's locale feature set is so limited
that making a distinction between Austria, Switzerland, and Germany
really makes no sense.
The only locale-specific things in OpenBSD are:
- the available character set
- message files for programs from ports (base system has very few
translations)
So, in the case of German, the result of setting any of these de_*
locales is the same in practice. I doubt anyone goes through the hassle
of maintaining separate translations for 3 German-speaking countries.
There will usually be one translation and it gets installed as de_DE,
de_AT, and de_CH. On non-OpenBSD systems, people might prefer de_CH
over de_DE for other reasons, so it makes sense to provide this locale.
But on OpenBSD it doesn't make much sense yet.
I believe we need more than one Spanish locale, because I know that
spoken and written Spanish differs between Europe and South America
in several ways. Unfortunately I don't know any Spanish so I can't
really judge how big these difference are.
Do we really need _21_ locales for Spanish, like in your diff?
Wouldn't adding one or two locales for South-American dialects of
Spanish be enough to cover these differences, at least where it
makes a difference in terms of OpenBSD's limited functionality,
and where it affects a significant chunk of ports?
> * fr_BE, fr_CA, fr_CH, fr_FR
> * it_CH, it_IT
> * nl_BE, nl_NL
>
> Why spanish is treated differently?
No reason. There was simply nobody so far who was bothered by the lack
of other Spanish locales. You are the first person to complain about
this. That's all.
> Finally I don't live in Spain but in Colombia, so I should be able to
> use es_CO.
No offence, but to me, the name of a locale is just... a name.
Let's try to make useful functional changes to the system.
Adding locales for purely patriotic reasons seems like a waste of time
to me. Please tell me more about the functional reasons you have for
adding 21 additional locale files, and why adding less than 21 would
not suffice.
