[PATCH] kernel32: Respect the LANG environment variable on Mac OS.

[James McKenzie]

Ken Thomases wrote:
> On Nov 30, 2009, at 5:31 PM, Bruno Haible wrote:
>
>   
>> This means that a POSIX compliant program has to do the following steps in
>> order to determine the locale for a certain category of settings.
>>  1) Inspect the LC_ALL environment variable. If it is set and non-empty,
>>     use its value.
>>  2) Otherwise: Inspect the LC_xxxx environment variable that matches the
>>     specific category. If it is set and non-empty, use its value.
>>  3) Otherwise: Inspect the LANG environment variable. If it is set and
>>     non-empty, use its value.
>>  4) Otherwise: Use the default locale. On MacOS X systems, this means to
>>     use user preferences that can be retrieved using the
>>     CFLocaleCopyCurrent, CFPreferencesCopyAppValue functions. Note that
>>     these settings are similar but not entirely equal to Unix (glibc)
>>     conventions (e.g. "zh-Hans" vs. "zh_CN"), therefore some mapping of
>>     names has to be done.
>>     
>
> By this logic, virtual no end-user program on any given Mac is compliant.
>
> Gettext and POSIX-compliance is one thing.  The user-desired behavior for Mac programs is another.
>
>
>   
>> This algorithm is used in all programs that rely on GNU gettext and works
>> perfectly fine:
>>  - By default, no LANG or LC_* environment variable is set, hence the
>>    programs obey the user settings.
>>  - For users of Terminal.app, who set these environment variables, the
>>    programs obey the environment variables.
>>     
>
> It is Terminal.app itself which is setting LANG for all shells it creates, by default.  The user is most likely oblivious to this fact.
>
>
>   
The idea behind most of the MacIntosh 'magic' is that the user is
deliberately oblivous to this.  I just ran the set command in a
terminal.app session, of which I have several running right now, and it
was set to en_US.utf8, which is what I expect because the 'American'
flag is displayed in the top information bar (also called the 'Apple'
bar.)  Gert may want to run the set command in a terminal session and
given what was said, the LANG setting should be en_ZA.utf8, which is
what I expect for South African English.

The Wine project could use this as a default with the Mac, which is not
POSIX compliant.

James McKenzie