Enable more refined locale Settings that are respected by system and 3rd-party apps
asked 2013-12-25 10:34:37 +0200
Jolla’s System settings > Language in SailfishOS (version 1.0.2.5) does not make it possible for user to set various localization and locale properties in the GUI. There is only LANG environment that can be set (by seleting a device language), and all the other locale properties get configured accordingly. But, user might want to set the language of the UI to be American English, but have the time and date, distances or monetary units to be displayd in metric system (as in most European countries). This affects the localization of the whole system UI in Jolla, and also apps that present information for which locale env is important; Maps, Calcularor, Messaging apps etc.
Currently, there is a localization work-around to manually set locale environment by enabling the Developer mode in Settings and either open the Terminal application (or connect to device from your PC with ssh) and edit a locale.conf-file in /var/lib/environment/nemo/ directory. All these aspects of locale can be set (and system UI and apps should respect these when displaying information to users).
LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC=fi_FI.UTF-8
LC_TIME=fi_FI.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE=en_GB.utf8
LC_MONETARY=fi_FI.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_PAPER=fi_FI.UTF-8
LC_NAME=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=fi_FI.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=en_GB.UTF-8
In addition to these locale envs, the keyboard layout setting should be made more modular so that the selected kbd language and layout could be set independently.
Note: in this forum there is a question about changing the unit system to metric in Maps app only. I still feel that this feature-request deserves it's own question because the issue is more general and concerns the whole system UI and localizable information that all applications can present to users.
It would be good to hear whether Jolla is already aware of this, so that we hopefully can expect this to be enabled and implemented system-wide in future upgrades.
As a Finnish user, I cannot stand the Finnish language in any UI, but would still like to have metric system units etc... So upvote for this!
ak77 ( 2013-12-30 14:29:57 +0200 )editSame for me; in all my conputer-related devices I've always had the UI language in English (even if I like to see dates as dd.mm.yyyy format and time as 24-hour clock and distances with metric units). SailfishOS/Jolla is first device where this is not currently possible (even if the whole LC-environmentv and locale system exists just to let user cuatonize it to his/her liking).
foss4ever ( 2013-12-30 14:41:18 +0200 )editVery annoying that British English is associated with Imperial units and not SI - definitely needs to be uncoupled / made more fine grained for all the English speakers who have no idea or use for yards and stones.
mdoube ( 2013-12-31 18:30:14 +0200 )editIf/when this is fixed in System settings, it should also be required from system apps and recommendaed to apps send to Harbour to respect locale env when they output text, numbers, dates/times, currencies etc..
foss4ever ( 2014-01-02 14:20:28 +0200 )edit"In the United Kingdom, draught beer and cider are the only goods that may notbe sold in metric units" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Kingdom Maybe off-topic, but it begs the question why the default measurement scale for en_GB is not metric.
mdoube ( 2014-01-03 15:27:05 +0200 )edit