Combine locales

Combine locales

[Fredrik Salomonsson]

Hi all,

I'm slowly transition my computers to running Guix System instead Guix
on a foreign distro. Starting with my laptop, as that is not that
critical right now.

One thing I cannot figure out is how to setup the operating-system to
use English as the language but use Swedish for the date format. Similar
to what is described in Locale Names[0] in the libc manual.

I.e. on my foreign distro I have /etc/locale.conf define:
---✀----------------------------------------------------------------------------
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_TIME=sv_SE.UTF-8
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In my operating-system configuration system I have:
---✀----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(operating-system
 ;;…
 (locale "en_US.utf8")
 (locale-definitions
  (list
   (locale-definition (name "en_US.utf8") (source "en_US") (charset "UTF-8"))
   (locale-definition (name "sv_SE.utf8") (source "sv_SE") (charset "UTF-8"))))
 ;;…
)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have checked the guix manual, but cannot find any information about
this. Is it not supported?

[0] https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Locale-Names.html

-- 
s/Fred[re]+i[ck]+/Fredrik/g

Re: Combine locales

[Sergiu Ivanov]

Hi Fredrik,

Fredrik Salomonsson <plattfot@posteo.net> [2022-09-25T01:35:12+0200]:
>
> One thing I cannot figure out is how to setup the operating-system to
> use English as the language but use Swedish for the date format. Similar
> to what is described in Locale Names[0] in the libc manual.
>
> I.e. on my foreign distro I have /etc/locale.conf define:
> ---✀----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> LANG=en_US.UTF-8
> LC_TIME=sv_SE.UTF-8
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> In my operating-system configuration system I have:
> ---✀----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> (operating-system
>  ;;…
>  (locale "en_US.utf8")
>  (locale-definitions
>   (list
>    (locale-definition (name "en_US.utf8") (source "en_US") (charset "UTF-8"))
>    (locale-definition (name "sv_SE.utf8") (source "sv_SE") (charset "UTF-8"))))
>  ;;…
> )
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I use a similar definition in operating-system, and I set up additional
locale parameters in my Guix Home configuration, using the
environment-variables field in home-bash-configuration [0].

I think it's fine if you launch everything from a shell, but it will
probably not work if you extensively use a graphical
desktop environment.

-
Sergiu

[0] https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Shells-Home-Services.html

Re: Combine locales

[Fredrik Salomonsson]

Hi Sergiu,

Sergiu Ivanov <sivanov@colimite.fr> writes:

> Hi Fredrik,
>
> Fredrik Salomonsson <plattfot@posteo.net> [2022-09-25T01:35:12+0200]:
>>
>> One thing I cannot figure out is how to setup the operating-system to
>> use English as the language but use Swedish for the date format. Similar
>> to what is described in Locale Names[0] in the libc manual.
>>
>> I.e. on my foreign distro I have /etc/locale.conf define:
>> ---✀----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> LANG=en_US.UTF-8
>> LC_TIME=sv_SE.UTF-8
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> In my operating-system configuration system I have:
>> ---✀----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> (operating-system
>>  ;;…
>>  (locale "en_US.utf8")
>>  (locale-definitions
>>   (list
>>    (locale-definition (name "en_US.utf8") (source "en_US") (charset "UTF-8"))
>>    (locale-definition (name "sv_SE.utf8") (source "sv_SE") (charset "UTF-8"))))
>>  ;;…
>> )
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I use a similar definition in operating-system, and I set up additional
> locale parameters in my Guix Home configuration, using the
> environment-variables field in home-bash-configuration [0].

It did not occur to me to put them in my bash configuration, that's
clever.

> I think it's fine if you launch everything from a shell, but it will
> probably not work if you extensively use a graphical
> desktop environment.
> [0] https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Shells-Home-Services.html

Yeah, I'm launching sway from my bash profile so that worked out well.
However I couldn't use environment-variables, but instead I needed to
put them directly in bash-profile [0]. Otherwise they would be defined
below my snippet for launching sway and not be defined for the sway
session.

It seems to be working now though, e.g. the clock in waybar now shows
the date in Swedish.

Thank you for the help!

[0] https://git.sr.ht/~plattfot/plt/tree/d8ad5f4a41fb607bfd0d890fcaf89990ed1a95ef/item/plt/home/bash.scm

-- 
s/Fred[re]+i[ck]+/Fredrik/g

Re: Combine locales

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Fredrik Salomonsson <plattfot@posteo.net> skribis:

> One thing I cannot figure out is how to setup the operating-system to
> use English as the language but use Swedish for the date format. Similar
> to what is described in Locale Names[0] in the libc manual.
>
> I.e. on my foreign distro I have /etc/locale.conf define:
> ---✀----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> LANG=en_US.UTF-8
> LC_TIME=sv_SE.UTF-8
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think we’re missing an easy way to configure this.  One way to do it
system-wide would be (untested):

  (simple-service 'locale-setup session-environment-service-type
                  '(("LANG" . "en_US.UTF-8")
                    ("LC_CTIME" . "sv_SE.UTF-8")))

That way, all sessions would get these environment variables by default.

HTH!

Ludo’.