xref: /localedata/

		       POSIX locale descriptions
				  and
		    POSIX character set descriptions

Ulrich Drepper			Time-stamp: <2004/11/27 13:06:54 drepper>
drepper@redhat.com


This directory contains the data needed to build the locale data files
to use the internationalization features of the GNU libc.

POSIX.2 describes the `localedef' utility which is part of the GNU libc.
You need this program to "compile" the locale description in a form
suitable for fast access by the GNU libc functions.  Any compilation is
based on a given character set.

Once you run `make install' for the GNU libc the data files are
automatically installed in the right place, ready for use by the
`localedef' program.

To compile the locale data files you simply have to decide which locale
(based on the location and the language) and which character set you
use.  E.g., French speaking Canadians would use the locale `fr_CA' and
the character set `ISO_8859-1,1987'.  Calling `localedef' to get the
desired data should happen like this:

	localedef -i fr_CA -f ISO-8859-1 fr_CA

This will place the 6 output files in the appropriate directory where
the GNU libc functions can find them.  Please note that you need
permission to write to this directory ($(prefix)/share/locale, where
$(prefix) is the value you specified while configuring GNU libc).  If
you do not have the necessary permissions, you can write the files into an
arbitrary directory by giving a path including a '/' character instead
of `fr_CA'.  E.g., to put the new files in a subdirectory of the
current directory simply use

	localedef -i fr_CA -f ISO-8859-1 ./fr_CA

How to use these data files is described in the GNU libc manual,
especially in the section describing the `setlocale' function.

All problems should be reported using

  https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/


One more note: the `POSIX' locale definition is not meant to be used
as an input file for `localedef'.  It is rather there to show the
values with are built in the libc binaries as default values when no
legal locale is found or the "C" or "POSIX" locale is selected.


		       The collation test suite
		       ########################

This package also contains a (beginning of a) test suite for the
collation functions in the GNU libc.  The files are provided sorted.
The test program shuffles the lines and sort them afterwards.

Some of the files are provided in 8bit form, i.e., not only ASCII
characters.  So the tools you use to process the files should be 8bit
clean.

To run the test program the appropriate locale information must be
installed.  Therefore the localedef program is used to generate this
data used the locale and charmap description files contained here.
Since we cannot run the localedef program in case of cross-compilation
no tests at all are performed.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Local Variables:
 mode:text
 eval:(load-library "time-stamp")
 eval:(make-local-variable 'write-file-hooks)
 eval:(add-hook 'write-file-hooks 'time-stamp)
 eval:(setq time-stamp-format '(time-stamp-yyyy/mm/dd time-stamp-hh:mm:ss user-login-name))
End:

Last Index update Sun Aug 20 00:31:31 CST 2023