Locales and Languages

The term «language» indicates a collection of properties used in spoken and written communication. Each language has a language name and a language identifier that indicate the particular code page (ANSI, DOS, Macintosh) used to represent the geographical location for the language on the operating system. A neutral language is indicated by a name such as «en» for English. A more geographically specific language can be indicated by a name that includes both locale and country/region information. For example, the locale English (United States) has the language name «en-US».

A «locale» is a collection of language-related user preference information represented as a list of values. WindowsВ XP supports more than 150 locales, and WindowsВ Vista supports about 200. Each locale is defined by a language and a sort order, and has both a locale name and a locale identifier. An example of a locale name for German (Germany) is «de-DE_phonebook».

Each operating system has at least one installed locale and often has many locales from which the user can select. Each locale has a variety of information associated with it, other than its name and identifier. Locale information types are described in Locale Information Constants.

The operating system assigns a locale to each thread, initially assigning the «system default locale,» defined by LOCALE_SYSTEM_DEFAULT. This locale is set when the operating system is installed or when the user selects it using the regional and language options portion of the Control Panel. When running a thread in a process belonging to the user, the operating system assigns the «user default locale» to the thread. This locale is defined by LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT. An application can override either default by using the SetThreadLocale function to explicitly set the locale for a thread.

Implementation of a language requires a corresponding locale. The operating system implements a neutral language by selecting the data for the locale associated with a specific version of the language, usually the most widespread locale.

Starting with WindowsВ Vista, it is possible for a particular language to correspond to a supplemental locale, which is a type of custom locale. Since supplemental locales all share a single locale identifier, your applications should handle these locales and the corresponding languages by name instead of by identifier.

Language concepts are closely related to locale concepts, but the two terms are not interchangeable. As a general rule, functions related to the Multilingual User Interface deal with languages, while the NLS functions act upon locales.

The following topics are covered in this section:

Mapping Locale Data

NLS includes a number of API functions that your applications can use to map locale data between locale identifiers and locale names, and list neutral locales. This topic discusses the use of these functions on Windows Vista and later and on pre-WindowsВ Vista operating systems (sometimes called «downlevel systems»).

Map Locale Data on Windows Vista and Later

NLS provides several locale mapping functions for use by applications that you develop to run on WindowsВ Vista and later. It also includes functions that your applications can use to enumerate neutral locales.

Use the Standard Conversion Functions for Data Mapping

To map between a locale name and a locale identifier, your application can call the LocaleNameToLCID function. The application uses LCIDToLocaleName to map between a locale identifier and a locale name.

List Neutral Locales

To enumerate neutral locales for WindowsВ 7 and later, your application can call EnumSystemLocalesEx with dwFlags set to LOCALE_NEUTRALDATA. It can also use GetLocaleInfoEx with LCType set to LOCALE_INEUTRAL.

Map Locale Data on Pre-Windows Vista Operating Systems

NLS includes a direct-link library (DLL) to use for applications that you develop to run on pre-WindowsВ Vista operating systems. The DLL supports both conversion and listing functions for data mapping.

Applications that only run on WindowsВ Vista and later should not use the downlevel mapping or listing functions.

Use the Downlevel Conversion Functions for Data Mapping

Your application targeted at a downlevel system can call the DownlevelLCIDToLocaleName function to convert a locale identifier to a locale name. If it needs to convert a locale name to a locale identifier, it should call DownlevelLocaleNameToLCID.

Use the Downlevel Listing Functions to Enumerate Neutral Locales

Your application should call the DownlevelGetParentLocaleLCID to retrieve the locale identifier of the parent for a locale. If the application needs to get the locale name of the parent for the locale, it should call DownlevelGetParentLocaleName.

Calling the «Locale Name» Functions

WindowsВ Vista introduces a large number of functions that use locale names instead of locale identifiers. These new functions provide good support for supplemental locales, and several of them provide additional functionality not available in the older NLS functions. Some of them, such as the new enumeration functions, also represent design improvements.

Applications that are intended to run only on WindowsВ Vista and later should use the «locale name» functions in preference to the NLS functions that use locale identifiers.

The following table lists the locale name functions along with the older functions that they can replace.

Functions using locale names	Functions using locale identifiers
CompareStringEx	CompareString
EnumCalendarInfoExEx	EnumCalendarInfo, EnumCalendarInfoEx
EnumDateFormatsExEx	EnumDateFormats, EnumDateFormatsEx
EnumSystemLocalesEx	EnumSystemLocales
EnumTimeFormatsEx	EnumTimeFormats
FindNLSStringEx	FindNLSString
GetCalendarInfoEx	GetCalendarInfo
GetCurrencyFormatEx	GetCurrencyFormat
GetDateFormatEx	GetDateFormat
GetDurationFormatEx	GetDurationFormat
GetLocaleInfoEx	GetLocaleInfo
GetNLSVersionEx	GetNLSVersion
GetNumberFormatEx	GetNumberFormat
GetSystemDefaultLocaleName	GetSystemDefaultLCID
GetTimeFormatEx	GetTimeFormat
GetUserDefaultLocaleName	GetUserDefaultLCID
IsValidLocaleName	IsValidLocale
LCMapStringEx	LCMapString

Example

An example showing the use of several functions based on locale names can be found in NLS: Name-based APIs Sample.

Table of locales

Contents

Introduction

Definition: (from Wikipedia) Locale is a set of parameters that defines the user’s language, country and any special variant preferences that the user wants to see in their user interface. Usually a locale identifier consists of at least a language identifier and a region identifier.

Actually, the one and only place where Moodle requires some locales to be installed on the machine is when handling date translation (according to this information).

Currently such locales are named differently under Unix-based and Win32-based platforms so we need to have them defined separately to allow Moodle to use them as necessary. For each lang package’ available for Moodle, we must specify the locale value (Unix locale) and the localewin value (Win32 locale). Both those strings should be (no mandatory) defined inside each Moodle 1.6 and upwards langpack to be able to display locale strings properly.

The general syntax for locales is:

(with information under brackets being optional)

While the .charset part seems to work properly under Unix, it seems that is not working under Win32 (at least from PHP), and strings returned from some PHP functions aren’t in the charset specified but in some sort of default charset. Let’s call it localewincharset. This forces us to convert from this charset to the current_charset() being used by the user.

Support in operating systems

Just in case you freshly installed some new locales and they don’t seem to work don’t forget to restart your webserver.

openSUSE

• SUSE linux 10.1 contains all necessary locales in default installation

Ubuntu based

The default installation contains only limited number of locales. You can generate all locales on server from command line:

Debian based

The default installation contains only a limited number of locales. You can generate the locales you need on your server from the command line. Login as root and execute:

choose the ones you need and press OK, next select the default locale for your server and press OK.

RHEL/CentOS

Since RHEL/CentOS 8 you may need install additional language supports manually by dnf/yum (more info):

or, for saving disk space:

or, for all languages:

Then check that the locale appeared on the system:

MoodleBox

You can add locales by typing in the MoodleBox console:

FreeBSD

All 5.x and later versions should already contain a large number of supported locales with utf-8 charset.

MacOS

Mac OS support for many locales is very poor. There is no easy way to add new locales to a Mac OS.

You can find the installed locales by issuing the following command in a Mac:

Some people have attempted digital surgery to install a needed Mac locale, by copying an existing locale into a new file. You should really edit the newly copied file in order to make the changes needed from the source file in order to adapt to your real local settings (like currency). See this site and this one and this one too.

MS Windows

There is no way to add new locales, see following table for list of supported locales.

Table

So, for each 1.6 Moodle language pack, we’ll describe below this columns:

• package_name: name of the language pack as shown in http://download.moodle.org/lang16/.
• lang_name: name of the language as shown in http://download.moodle.org/lang16/.
• locale: locale string to be used under Unix platforms. This will be stored in each language langconfig.php file.
• localewin: locale string to be used under Win32 platforms. This will be stored in each language langconfig.php file.
• localewincharset: charset in which PHP is retrieving information from locale-dependent functions (strftime. ). This will allow us to convert such strings to the final charset properly. This will be stored in each language langconfig.php file.

package_name	lang_name	locale	localewin	localewincharset
af_utf8	Afrikaans	af_ZA.UTF-8	Afrikaans_South Africa.1252	WINDOWS-1252
sq_utf8	Albanian	sq_AL.UTF-8	Albanian_Albania.1250	WINDOWS-1250
ar_utf8	Arabic	ar_SA.UTF-8	Arabic_Saudi Arabia.1256	WINDOWS-1256
eu_utf8	Basque	eu_ES.UTF-8	Basque_Spain.1252	WINDOWS-1252
be_utf8	Belarusian	be_BY.UTF-8	Belarusian_Belarus.1251	WINDOWS-1251
bs_utf8	Bosnian	bs_BA.UTF-8	Bosnian (Latin)	WINDOWS-1250
bg_utf8	Bulgarian	bg_BG.UTF-8	Bulgarian_Bulgaria.1251	WINDOWS-1251
ca_utf8	Catalan	ca_ES.UTF-8	Catalan_Spain.1252	WINDOWS-1252
hr_utf8	Croatian	hr_HR.UTF-8	Croatian_Croatia.1250	WINDOWS-1250
zh_cn_utf8	Chinese (Simplified)	zh_CN.UTF-8	Chinese_China.936	CP936
zh_tw_utf8	Chinese (Traditional)	zh_TW.UTF-8	Chinese_Taiwan.950	CP950
cs_utf8	Czech	cs_CZ.UTF-8	Czech_Czech Republic.1250	WINDOWS-1250
da_utf8	Danish	da_DK.UTF-8	Danish_Denmark.1252	WINDOWS-1252
nl_utf8	Dutch	nl_NL.UTF-8	Dutch_Netherlands.1252	WINDOWS-1252
en_utf8	English	en.UTF-8	English_Australia.1252	-empty string-
en_us_utf8	English (US)	-parent en_utf8 used-	-parent en_utf8 used-	-parent en_utf8 used-
et_utf8	Estonian	et_EE.UTF-8	Estonian_Estonia.1257	WINDOWS-1257
fa_utf8	Farsi	fa_IR.UTF-8	Farsi_Iran.1256	WINDOWS-1256
fil_utf8	Filipino	fil_PH.UTF-8	Filipino_Philippines.1252	WINDOWS-1252
fi_utf8	Finnish	fi_FI.UTF-8	Finnish_Finland.1252	WINDOWS-1252
fr_utf8	French	fr_FR.UTF-8 or fr_CH.UTF-8 or fr_BE.UTF-8	French_France.1252	WINDOWS-1252
fr_ca_utf8	French (Canada)	fr_CA.UTF-8	French_Canada.1252	-parent fr_utf8 used-
ga_utf8	Gaelic	ga.UTF-8	Gaelic; Scottish Gaelic	WINDOWS-1252
gl_utf8	Gallego	gl_ES.UTF-8	Galician_Spain.1252	WINDOWS-1252
ka_utf8	Georgian	ka_GE.UTF-8	Georgian_Georgia.65001	-empty string-
de_utf8	German	de_DE.UTF-8	German_Germany.1252	WINDOWS-1252
de_du_utf8	German (Personal)	de_DE.UTF-8	-parent de_utf8 used-	-parent de_utf8 used-
el_utf8	Greek	el_GR.UTF-8	Greek_Greece.1253	WINDOWS-1253
gu_utf8	Gujarati	gu.UTF-8	Gujarati_India.0
he_utf8	Hebrew	he_IL.utf8	Hebrew_Israel.1255	WINDOWS-1255
hi_utf8	Hindi	hi_IN.UTF-8	Hindi.65001	-empty string-
hu_utf8	Hungarian	hu.UTF-8	Hungarian_Hungary.1250	WINDOWS-1250
is_utf8	Icelandic	is_IS.UTF-8	Icelandic_Iceland.1252	WINDOWS-1252
id_utf8	Indonesian	id_ID.UTF-8	Indonesian_indonesia.1252	WINDOWS-1252
it_utf8	Italian	it_IT.UTF-8	Italian_Italy.1252	WINDOWS-1252
ja_utf8	Japanese	ja_JP.UTF-8	Japanese_Japan.932	CP932
kn_utf8	Kannada	kn_IN.UTF-8	Kannada.65001	-empty string-
km_utf8	Khmer	km_KH.UTF-8	Khmer.65001	-empty string-
ko_utf8	Korean	ko_KR.UTF-8	Korean_Korea.949	EUC-KR
lo_utf8	Lao	lo_LA.UTF-8	Lao_Laos.UTF-8	WINDOWS-1257
lt_utf8	Lithuanian	lt_LT.UTF-8	Lithuanian_Lithuania.1257	WINDOWS-1257
lv_utf8	Latvian	lat.UTF-8	Latvian_Latvia.1257	WINDOWS-1257
ml_utf8	Malayalam	ml_IN.UTF-8	Malayalam_India.x-iscii-ma	x-iscii-ma
ms_utf8	Malaysian	ms_MY.UTF-8	Malay_malaysia.1252	WINDOWS-1252
mi_tn_utf8	Maori (Ngai Tahu)	mi_NZ.UTF-8	Maori.1252	WINDOWS-1252
mi_wwow_utf8	Maori (Waikoto Uni)	mi_NZ.UTF-8	Maori.1252	WINDOWS-1252
mn_utf8	Mongolian	mn.UTF-8	Cyrillic_Mongolian.1251
no_utf8	Norwegian	no_NO.UTF-8	Norwegian_Norway.1252	WINDOWS-1252
no_gr_utf8	Norwegian (Primary)	no_NO.UTF-8	-parent no_utf8 used-	-parent no_utf8 used-
nn_utf8	Nynorsk	nn_NO.UTF-8	Norwegian-Nynorsk_Norway.1252	WINDOWS-1252
pl_utf8	Polish	pl.UTF-8	Polish_Poland.1250	WINDOWS-1250
pt_utf8	Portuguese	pt_PT.UTF-8	Portuguese_Portugal.1252	WINDOWS-1252
pt_br_utf8	Portuguese (Brazil)	pt_BR.UTF-8	Portuguese_Brazil.1252	WINDOWS-1252
ro_utf8	Romanian	ro_RO.UTF-8	Romanian_Romania.1250	WINDOWS-1250
ru_utf8	Russian	ru_RU.UTF-8	Russian_Russia.1251	WINDOWS-1251
sm_utf8	Samoan	mi_NZ.UTF-8	Maori.1252	WINDOWS-1252
sr_utf8	Serbian	sr_CS.UTF-8	Bosnian(Cyrillic), Serbian (Cyrillic)	WINDOWS-1251
sk_utf8	Slovak	sk_SK.UTF-8	Slovak_Slovakia.1250	WINDOWS-1250
sl_utf8	Slovenian	sl_SI.UTF-8	Slovenian_Slovenia.1250	WINDOWS-1250
so_utf8	Somali	so_SO.UTF-8	not found!	not found!
es_utf8	Spanish (International)	es_ES.UTF-8	Spanish_Spain.1252	WINDOWS-1252
sv_utf8	Swedish	sv_SE.UTF-8	Swedish_Sweden.1252	WINDOWS-1252
tl_utf8	Tagalog	tl.UTF-8	not found!	not found!
ta_utf8	Tamil	ta_IN.UTF-8	English_Australia.1252
th_utf8	Thai	th_TH.UTF-8	Thai_Thailand.874	WINDOWS-874
to_utf8	Tongan	mi_NZ.UTF-8′	Maori.1252	WINDOWS-1252
tr_utf8	Turkish	tr_TR.UTF-8	Turkish_Turkey.1254	WINDOWS-1254
uk_utf8	Ukrainian	uk_UA.UTF-8	Ukrainian_Ukraine.1251	WINDOWS-1251
vi_utf8	Vietnamese	vi_VN.UTF-8	Vietnamese_Viet Nam.1258	WINDOWS-1258

Note: Some locales for windows in red could be incorrect (technically or geographically but they are the only way I’ve found to show dates properly in my XP box). Also some other coloured cells must be revised because they are not working.