l10n_intro(5)							File Formats Manual						     l10n_intro(5)

NAME

       l10n_intro, l10n, locales, LOCPATH - Introduction to localization (L10N)

DESCRIPTION

       Localization refers to the process of establishing information within a computer system specific to each supported language, cultural data,
       and coded character set (codeset) combination.  Each such combination gives rise to the definition of one locale. The abbreviation L10N	is
       often used to stand for localization as there are 10 characters between the beginning "L" and the ending "N" of that word.

       See  i18n_intro(5)  for introductory information about internationalization and how to use system commands to set a locale. For information
       about creating locales, refer to localedef(1), charmap(4), and locale(4). For information about creating locales and  writing  applications
       that use locales, refer to Writing Software for the International Market.

       The current release of the operating system supports the following languages with locales. Each language is discussed separately in its own
       reference page:

       Catalan Chinese (Simplified and Traditional) Czech Dutch Finnish French German Greek Hebrew Hungarian  Icelandic  Italian  Japanese  Korean
       Lithuanian Norwegian Polish Portuguese Russian Slovak Slovene Spanish Swedish Thai Turkish

       For  some of the languages, more than one codeset and country or territory are supported. Hence, multiple locales are supported for certain
       languages.  The following list names and describes all the supported locales. For information about the character encoding used by  a  par-
       ticular	locale,  refer	to the reference page for the codeset specified in the last part of the locale name or, for those that end in Uni-
       code(5).  Catalan locale for Spain (uses the Latin-1 codeset) Catalan locale for Spain (uses the Latin-9 codeset) Catalan locale for  Spain
       (uses  the  UTF-8  codeset) Czech locale for Czech Republic (uses the Latin-2 codeset) Danish locale for Denmark (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
       Danish locale for Denmark (uses the Latin-9 codeset) Danish locale for Denmark (uses the UTF-8 codeset) German locale for Switzerland (uses
       the Latin-1 codeset) German locale for Switzerland (uses the Latin-9 codeset) German locale for Switzerland (uses the UTF-8 codeset) German
       locale for Germany (uses the Latin-1 codeset) German locale for Germany (uses the Latin-9 codeset) German  locale  for  Germany	(uses  the
       UTF-8  codeset)	Greek  locale  for Greece (uses the ISO Greek codeset) Greek locale for Greece (uses the UTF-8 codeset) English locale for
       Great Britain (uses the Latin-1 codeset) English locale for Great Britain (uses the Latin-9 codeset) English locale for Great Britain (uses
       the UTF-8 codeset) English locale that includes the euro character (uses the UTF-8 codeset)

	      This  locale  both  supports the euro character and defines the decimal point as a comma (,) and the thousands separator as a period
	      (.). Therefore, this locale is useful in many European countries, not just those for which English  is  the  native  language,  when
	      assigned	only  to  the LC_MONETARY locale category or environment variable.  English locale for the U.S. (uses the Latin-1 codeset)
	      English locale for the U.S. (uses the Latin-9 codeset) English locale for the U.S. (uses cp850 encoding)

	      Use this locale with data that contains accented characters and that was generated on a PC using the cp850 code page  for  character
	      encoding.  This  character  encoding is usually the default for the DOS and Windows operating systems in Europe. The en_US.ISO8859-1
	      and en_US.cp850 locales encode English characters the same way but use different values for accented and other  non-English  charac-
	      ters in the Latin-1 character set.  English locales for the U.S. (use the UTF-8 codeset)

	      The  @euro  variant defines the local currency sign to be the euro character and the international currency sign to be EUR. See also
	      en_EU.UTF-8@euro.  Spanish locale for Spain (uses the Latin-1 codeset) Spanish locale for Spain (uses the Latin-9  codeset)  Spanish
	      locale for Spain (uses the UTF-8 codeset) Finnish locale for Finland (uses the Latin-1 codeset) Finnish locale for Finland (uses the
	      Latin-9 codeset) Finnish locale for Finland (uses the UTF-8 codeset) French locale for Belgium (uses  the  Latin-1  codeset)  French
	      locale  for Belgium (uses the Latin-9 codeset) French locale for Belgium (uses the UTF-8 codeset) French locale for Canada (uses the
	      Latin-1 codeset) French locale for Canada (uses the Latin-9 codeset) French locale for Canada (uses the UTF-8 codeset) French locale
	      for  Switzerland	(uses  the Latin-1 codeset) French locale for Switzerland (uses the Latin-9 codeset) French locale for Switzerland
	      (uses the UTF-8 codeset) French locale for France (uses the Latin-1 codeset) French locale for France  (uses  the  Latin-9  codeset)
	      French  locale  for France (uses the UTF-8 codeset) Hebrew locale for Israel (uses the ISO Hebrew codeset) Hungarian locale for Hun-
	      gary (uses the Latin-2 codeset) Icelandic locale for Iceland (uses the Latin-1 codeset)  Icelandic  locale  for  Iceland	(uses  the
	      Latin-9  codeset)  Icelandic locale for Iceland (uses the UTF-8 codeset) Italian locale for Italy (uses the Latin-1 codeset) Italian
	      locale for Italy (uses the Latin-9 codeset) Italian locale for Italy (uses the UTF-8 codeset) Hebrew locale for Israel (uses the ISO
	      Hebrew codeset)

	      This locale name is supported for backward compatibiility. The recommended name to use for the ISO Hebrew locale is he_IL.ISO8859-8.
	      Japanese locale for Japan (uses the Shift JIS codeset) Japanese locale for Japan (uses the DEC Kanji codeset)  Japanese  locale  for
	      Japan  (uses  the Japanese EUC codeset) Japanese locale for Japan (uses the Super DEC Kanji codeset) Japanese locale for Japan (uses
	      the UTF-8 codeset) Korean locale for Korea (uses the DEC Korean codeset) Korean locale for  Korea  (uses	the  Korean  EUC  codeset)
	      Korean  locale for Korea (uses the UTF-8 codeset) Lithuanian locale for Lithuania (uses the Latin-4 codeset) Flemish locale for Bel-
	      gium (uses the Latin-1 codeset) Flemish locale for Belgium (uses the Latin-9 codeset) Flemish locale for	Belgium  (uses	the  UTF-8
	      codeset)	Dutch  locale for the Netherlands  (uses the Latin-1 codeset) Dutch locale for the Netherlands	(uses the Latin-9 codeset)
	      Dutch locale for the Netherlands	(uses the UTF-8 codeset) Norwegian locale for Norway  (uses the Latin-1 codeset) Norwegian  locale
	      for  Norway  (uses  the  Latin-9	codeset)  Norwegian locale for Norway  (uses the UTF-8 codeset) Polish locale for Poland (uses the
	      Latin-2 codeset) Portuguese locale for Portugal (uses the Latin-1 codeset) Portuguese locale for Portugal (uses the Latin-9 codeset)
	      Portuguese  locale for Portugal (uses the UTF-8 codeset) Russian locale for Russia (uses the ISO Cyrillic codeset) Slovak locale for
	      Slovakia (uses the Latin-2 codeset) Slovene locale for Slovenia (uses the Latin-2 codeset)  Swedish  locale  for	Sweden	(uses  the
	      Latin-1 codeset) Swedish locale for Sweden (uses the Latin-9 codeset) Swedish locale for Sweden (uses the UTF-8 codeset) Thai locale
	      for Thailand (uses the TACTIS codeset) Turkish locale for Turkey (uses the Latin-5 codeset) Simplified Chinese locale for  the  Peo-
	      ple's  Republic  of  China (uses the DEC Hanzi codeset) Simplified Chinese locale for the People's Republic of China (uses the UTF-8
	      codeset) Traditional Chinese locale for Hong Kong (uses the BIG-5 codeset) Traditional Chinese locale for Hong Kong  (uses  the  DEC
	      Hanyu  codeset)  Simplified  Chinese locale for Hong Kong (uses the DEC Hanzi codeset Traditional Chinese locale for Hong Kong (uses
	      the Taiwanese EUC codeset) Traditional Chinese locale for Hong Kong (uses the UTF-8 codeset) Traditional Chinese locale  for  Taiwan
	      (uses  the  BIG-5  codeset) Traditional Chinese locale for Taiwan (uses the DEC Hanyu codeset) Traditional Chinese locale for Taiwan
	      (uses the Taiwanese EUC codeset) Traditional Chinese locale for Taiwan (uses the UTF-8 codeset)

	      This locale supports Simplified Chinese as well as Traditional Chinese.

       For the zh_CN.dechanzi locale, the @pinyin, @radical, and @stroke variants are available  for  sorting  by  pinyin,  radical,  and  stroke,
       respectively.  For  the	zh_TW.big5, zh_TW.dechanyu, and zh_TW.eucTW locales, the @chuyin, @radical, and @stroke variants are available for
       sorting by chuyin, radical, and stroke, respectively.  These variant locale names (those  including  the  @collation_modifier  suffix)  are
       available for assignment to the LC_COLLATE variable.

       The  locales  whose names end in support file code and internal process code according to the ISO 10646 and Unicode standards.  The univer-
       sal.UTF-8 locale is also available (for use by applications rather than end users) and supports the complete set of characters in the  Uni-
       versal  Character  Set  (UCS).  For locales, file code may include characters encoded in more than one byte, so these locales should not be
       used by applications that do not use wide-character functions for data manipulation.

       For some locales that use traditional UNIX and proprietary codesets, there are also corresponding @ucs4 locale variants available  for  use
       by  applications  that require internal process code to be in UCS-4 format while file code remains in the format of the traditional UNIX or
       proprietary codeset. In other words, both UTF-8 and @ucs4 locales use UCS-4 format for internal process code, but differ in terms  of  file
       code support. Refer to Unicode(5) for more information about encoding formats of the @ucs4 and locales.

       The  and  locales  are  the only locales that include the euro (C=) monetary sign in the coded character set. The *.UTF-8@euro locales also
       define the local currency sign to be the euro character and the international currency sign to be EUR. See  euro(5)  for  more  information
       about the euro character and how it is supported.

       You  can  use  the  -a option with the locale command to list all the locales available on the system. Note that the POSIX (or C) locale is
       always available because it must exist on all systems that conform to The Open Group's UNIX specifications. The POSIX locale is the default
       locale when locale variables are not set.

									  Note

       The dxterm terminal emulator does not support locales based on the following codesets: Unicode (UTF-8) Latin-9 (ISO8859-15)

       Use dtterm, the default terminal emulator for the Common Desktop Environment (CDE), with locales based on the Latin-9 and UTF-8 codesets.

   Environment Variables Related to Localization
       The  following  system  environment variables can be set (usually only by installed applications or by programmers who are testing applica-
       tions or converters under development) to override the default search path for certain kinds of localized files: Specifies the search  path
       for  locales  and  codeset converters.  Note that this environment variable is not defined by current industry standards. For more informa-
       tion, refer to the iconv_intro(5), iconv_open(3), and setlocale(3) reference pages.

	      Because the LOCPATH variable is not defined by standards, it is recommended for use only when testing locales  or  converters  under
	      development  and	not  as a systemwide method for finding installed converters or locales.  When you set LOCPATH, make sure that the
	      search path is valid for both locales and converters. Otherwise, application and system software will be able to find  only  locales
	      or  only	converters  in environments where both kinds of files are required.  Specifies the search path for message catalogs, which
	      contain translated text for programs. This variable is used primarily by the catopen() function. Refer to the  catopen(3)  reference
	      page for detailed information on NLSPATH.

   Customizing Locales
       Partial	source	files, along with an associated Makefile, are available for many locales in the /usr/lib/nls/loc/src directory. By editing
       one of these source files and using the Makefile to rebuild the locale (make locale_name), you can customize one or more of  the  following
       features: The format of affirmative and negative responses (LC_MESSAGES section) Rules and symbols for formatting monetary numeric informa-
       tion (LC_MONETARY section) Rules and symbols for formatting nonmonetary numeric information (LC_NUMERIC section) Rules and symbols for for-
       matting date and time information (LC_TIME section)

       The  LC_CTYPE  and LC_COLLATE sections of these locale sources are not customizable. This means that you cannot use one of these sources to
       change how characters are classified or collated.  By implication, this also means that you cannot add a new character  to  a  locale  that
       does  not already support it.  For example, you cannot add the European monetary character (euro) to a locale that does not already support
       that character.	However, you can edit the LC_MONETARY section to define a string identifier for euro by using characters that  the  locale
       does support.  For example, you could replace the existing monetary symbol with EUR.

       For more information on a locale source file, see locale(4).

									 Caution

       Customized versions of locales that are provided with the operating system are not preserved when the operating system is reinstalled, even
       when an update installation procedure is used. Therefore, it is important to back up files for customized locales and their sources  before
       reinstalling the operating system. After the reinstallation is complete, you will need to restore your customized locales to the system. If
       the newly installed sources have revisions when compared to the the old sources, it might be preferable to apply your customizations to the
       newly installed sources and rebuild your customized locales.

SEE ALSO

       Commands: locale(1), localedef(1)

       Functions: catopen(3)

       Files: charmap(4), locale(4)

       Others:	Catalan(5),  Chinese(5),  Czech(5),  dechanyu(5),  dechanzi(5), deckanji(5), deckorean(5), Dutch(5), eucJP(5), eucKR(5), eucTW(5),
       euro(5),  Finnish(5),  French(5),  German(5),   Greek(5),   Hebrew(5),	Hungarian(5),	i18n_intro(5),	 i18n_printing(5),   Icelandic(5),
       iconv_intro(5), iso2022(5), iso2022jp(5), iso8859-1(5), iso8859-2(5), iso8859-4(5), iso8859-5(5), iso8859-7(5), iso8859-8(5), iso8859-9(5),
       iso8859-15(5),  Italian(5),  Japanese(5),  jiskanji(5),	Korean(5),  Lithuanian(5),  Norwegian(5),  Polish(5),  Portuguese(5),  Russian(5),
       sbig5(5), sdeckanji(5), shiftjis(5), Slovak(5), Slovene(5), Spanish(5), Swedish(5), TACTIS(5), telecode(5) Thai(5), Turkish(5), Unicode(5)

       Writing Software for the International Market

																     l10n_intro(5)