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locale-en-nl

English language locale for the Netherlands (en_NL)

Introduction

Many users who are physically located in the Netherlands use software in the American English language. Most of them are native Dutch speakers working in IT, but this also applies for non-Dutch expats in the Netherlands. In their work they usually have their systems configured to US English International. However, due to the geographic location or territory they reside in, it can be highly desirable for certain data to be represented according to the local Dutch notation, while the rest remains in English.

It is possible to configure a system by setting a mix of LC sections of different locales, which are part of glibc. For example the LC_MONETARY of en_US and LC_TIME of nl_NL. Nevertheless, it is not possible to mix on section level only to get a proper locale with English language in the Netherlands territory. This requires a custom locale to correctly set fields in the sections LC_MONETARY, LC_TIME and LC_ADDRESS.

For this reason the locale called en_NL has been created. It is based on the locale en_US and has some carefully mixed parts from nl_NL. Note that this specific configuration is impossible to obtain by using locale nl_NL and setting LANGUAGES to en or other mixed LC section usage. This justifies an en_NL locale.

To see how each section of en_NL has been composed, please see the comments:

  • % From en_US
  • % From nl_NL
  • % Custom en_NL

For more comprehensible comparison, see the section on validation below.

Installation

Install the locale en_NL with ./add.sh or running the commands from that script manually. This script supprts Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora/Red Hat and OpenSUSE.

Note: LC_CTYPE needs further intervention

The LC_CTYPE provided by this locale is identical to that provided by en_US.UTF-8. Nevertheless, further intervention is required to get everything to work smoothly (source). There are two approaches: either explicitly set LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 in /etc/locale.conf, or modify the Xlib database (which is what add.sh does, if this database exists).

TODO

sudo dnf install glibc-locale-source
# inside the top-level directory of the `locale-en-nl` repository
sudo localedef --no-archive --inputfile=en_NL --charmap=UTF-8 en_NL.UTF-8

The compiled locale files can be found in /usr/lib/locale/en_NL.utf8/.

Validation

Examine the generated TXT files with: fldiff nl_NL.txt en_NL.txt fldiff en_US.txt en_NL.txt

In the directory comparison are screenshots of these colored diffs.

These files have been generated with the ./validate.sh script after installation.

Commands

List the locales contained in the locale archive file.

localedef --list-archive

Show current settings of the system locale and keyboard mapping.

localectl status

List available locales useful for configuration with set-locale.

localectl list-locales

More details can be viewed with:

cat /etc/default/locale
more /etc/locale.gen
more /etc/locale.alias

Documentation

See also

To do for other locales

The following minor improvemens for others locales that still need to be done are:

  • replace tel_dom_fmt in nl_NL locale from "" to "0%a-%l"