problem setting language in gdm2.4

[Glenn Johnson]

On Sun, Oct 05, 2003 at 01:43:14AM -0400, Joe Marcus Clarke wrote:

> On Sun, 2003-10-05 at 01:30, Glenn Johnson wrote:
>
> > On Sun, Oct 05, 2003 at 01:19:02AM -0400, Joe Marcus Clarke wrote:
> >
> > > On Sun, 2003-10-05 at 01:01, Glenn Johnson wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Sun, Oct 05, 2003 at 12:26:33AM -0400, Joe Marcus Clarke
> > > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > On Sat, 2003-10-04 at 23:35, Glenn Johnson wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > On Sat, Oct 04, 2003 at 12:56:40PM -0400, Joe Marcus Clarke
> > > > > > wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > On Sat, 2003-10-04 at 00:58, Glenn Johnson wrote:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > I tried to set my language to "American English" in
> > > > > > > > gdm2.4.4.3 but it gives an error the "en.US" is not
> > > > > > > > found and it uses the system default.  The problem
> > > > > > > > with that is the system default does not show all
> > > > > > > > of the characters. This is particularly a problem
> > > > > > > > with trying to use digraphs in vim running in a
> > > > > > > > gnome-terminal. Setting the language in gdm used to do
> > > > > > > > the right thing.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Any ideas? Thanks.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I just did this, and it worked (i.e. it
> > > > > > > set LANG to en_US.ISO_8859-1).  Check your
> > > > > > > /usr/X11R6/etc/gdm/locale.aliases file to see what
> > > > > > > American English is mapped to.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > The following is grepped from locale.alias in
> > > > > > /usr/X11R6/etc/gdm:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > English(American) en_US.UTF-8,en_US.ISO_8859-1
> > > > >
> > > > > Looks like gdm-2.4.4.x changed things.  Look for ~/.dmrc.
> > > >
> > > > I have that one.  Here are the contents:
> > > >
> > > > [Desktop]
> > > > Session=gnome
> > >
> > > Try adding:
> > >
> > > Language=en_US.ISO_8859-1
> > >
> > > And see if that helps.
> >
> > I tried it, but no joy.  When I logged in with gdm, I got the
> > following message in a dialog box:
> >
> >         Language en_US.ISO_8859-1 does not exist.
> >         Using System default.
> > 
> > Of course, that brings me right back where I was.
> 
> Try:
> 
> en_US.ISO8859-1

That works!

I went ahead and removed the Language line from ~/.dmrc and edited the
gdm locale.alias file to change en_US.ISO-8859-1 to en_US.ISO8859-1 to
make sure that gdm would handle it correctly.  It did.  After I logged
in, the Language entry was back in my ~/.dmrc file and digraphs work in
vim in a gnome-terminal again.

Looking at what is in /usr/share/locale, I guess all of those entries in
the gdm locale.alias file are incorrect.

Thanks for your help.

-- 
Glenn Johnson
glennpj at charter.net