From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.lib.musl.general/12568 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Rich Felker Newsgroups: gmane.linux.lib.musl.general Subject: Re: setlocale behavior with 'missing' locales Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2018 14:25:45 -0500 Message-ID: <20180301192545.GV1436@brightrain.aerifal.cx> References: <20171108050338.GL1627@brightrain.aerifal.cx> <20171108052715.GM1627@brightrain.aerifal.cx> <20180301011340.GU1436@brightrain.aerifal.cx> Reply-To: musl@lists.openwall.com NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1519932248 5113 195.159.176.226 (1 Mar 2018 19:24:08 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2018 19:24:08 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) To: musl@lists.openwall.com Original-X-From: musl-return-12584-gllmg-musl=m.gmane.org@lists.openwall.com Thu Mar 01 20:24:03 2018 Return-path: Envelope-to: gllmg-musl@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from mother.openwall.net ([195.42.179.200]) by blaine.gmane.org with smtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1erToA-0000gn-2L for gllmg-musl@m.gmane.org; Thu, 01 Mar 2018 20:24:02 +0100 Original-Received: (qmail 11940 invoked by uid 550); 1 Mar 2018 19:25:59 -0000 Mailing-List: contact musl-help@lists.openwall.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-ID: Original-Received: (qmail 11896 invoked from network); 1 Mar 2018 19:25:58 -0000 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Original-Sender: Rich Felker Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.linux.lib.musl.general:12568 Archived-At: On Thu, Mar 01, 2018 at 01:10:47PM -0600, William Pitcock wrote: > >> One notable issue is that, right now, we rely on being able to set > >> LC_MESSAGES to an arbitrary name even if there's no libc locale > >> definition for it; this is because gettext() relies on the name of the > >> current LC_MESSAGES locale to find (application-specific) translation > >> files that might exist even without a libc translation. I'm not sure > >> how we would best keep this working under changes similar to the > >> above. > > > > Any further thoughts on this? I'd like to begin addressing these > > issues in this release cycle. > > > > I think the above plan works (is conforming, doesn't break things) > > except for the LC_MESSAGES issue mentioned at the end. I don't have > > any good ideas still for dealing with that. Really since gettext can > > be used with any category, not just LC_MESSAGES (although LC_MESSAGES > > is the normal choice), it applies to all categories. Maybe we could > > still use the ("nonexistant") requested locale name in this case, or > > some derivative of it that clarifies that it's synthesized...? > > +1 to using this approach. > > We could use a locale name such as "en_US@virtual.UTF-8". > > glibc uses this style of locale name for locales such as UK english > with eurozone LC_CURRENCY: en_UK@euro.UTF-8. I was actually just in the process of trying to work out something very similar. Here's how I think it might work: setlocale(cat, "") -- always succeeds, produces ll_TT@virtual (or ll_TT@missing was my idea) if a locale file by the matching name is not found. setlocale(cat, "ll_TT@virtual") (or whatever name) - always succeeds. setlocale(cat, "ll_TT[@other]") - succeeds only if a file matching the name is found. One thing I don't entirely like is repurposing the @ modifier for this; it conflicts with (and perhaps fails to preserve) an existing modifier if there is one, and affects how search for gettext translation files would happen (searching extra @virtual paths). Perhaps we should instead make it a separate component delimited in some other way so it can always be dropped by gettext. Rich