English and Russian

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

Hello all,

I would like to get my Gentoo installation up and running with one little addon. I would like to be able to read and type using both English and Russian (cyrillic) subsets. Basically, I would like to be able to switch back and forth between using an English keyboard and a Russian keyboard. I don't need to have all my programs in Russian, but I would like to be able to type. I'm thinking that I just need to add an entry for Russian in locale.gen, is that correct? Also, is there a list of the entries, so that I make sure I get it right? Lastly, if I would want to switch back and forth between the two (under KDE), how would I do that? I know that when I'm on my Window$ machine, there is an icon that I can toggle between EN and RU.

Thanks preemptively,
Zach
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“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
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xorserer · Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2007 1:09 am Post subject:

it's really very simple.

i personally use GNOME, but i know KDE is very similar.
i type in both english and hebrew, and all i had to do is go to keyboard preferences, add another keyboard layout (layout == language you type in),
and then choose which key combination will switch between them.
if i remember correctly, you'll find it somewhere under "keyboard" in the kde control center...

other than that i didn't have any problem with locales and such (but maybe because i'm using a unicode system)

one thing to bear in mind is that if you mount a different filesystem, you have to pass mount the correct option (about charset) so that you'll see the filenames as they should be.
here are my relevant /etc/fstab lines:

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

Well that does seem quite simple. I thought I would have to at least add the locale to locale.gen. I'll try the method you suggested when I get everything up to date (emerge -uD world can take quite some time).

Thanks again, and I'll report back.
--Zach
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“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
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d2_racing · Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2007 2:42 am Post subject:

Yeah, I think that running locale-gen maybe require to recompile GCC with the new set of locales...Or maybe I'm wrong ?

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

I can't seem to figure out what the actual strings would be for the locale.gen file. Is there a listing of them and appropriate syntax somewhere?
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“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
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vadik56 · n00b Joined: 14 Feb 2006 Posts: 70

Here is my locale.gen:

LXj · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 03 Dec 2005 Posts: 107

You have to add something to locale.gen ONLY if you want your programs to be translated to Russian. But you said you don't want that.

So don't add anything to locale.gen. This is very simple: you just add language layout in KDE/Gnome or in xorg.conf.

Linux is never overcomplicated

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

Okay, but when you say that you add the information to locale.gen to get programs translated into Russian, how would it know when to use English and when to use Russian? I understand that to use the keyboard to type in either, I just set it in KDE though.

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“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
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NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

Also, I found at the end of the KDE guide that you can add LINGUAS="" to your /etc/make.conf. Considering that KDE uses English by default, I would imagine that you only put additional language in there, right? So, I would put:

xorserer · Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 10:04 pm Post subject:

you'll want to put both en & ru in there

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

Ah, well that sounds good then. I'll do that and then merge the longest compilation I know of...OpenOffice.

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“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
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Deem3n · n00b Joined: 15 Jun 2007 Posts: 20

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

WOW, that wiki page was excellent! Thank you for the link. That will make switching back and forth quite simple.

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“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
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NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

Okay, sorry to open this thread again. However, I want to know one more thing bout the LINGUAS option. If I merge OpenOffice, K3B, AmaroK, or other programs that support LINGUAS, how will I switch back and forth between the two languages? Will all the programs magically know to use Russian when I change to Russian in my KDE Control Panel, or will I have to set each program individually every time I switch back and forth? If all the programs will switch automatically based on my language/regional settings in the KControl Panel, then I'll merge all these programs with both languages in LINGUAS. Otherwise, I would rather just stick to English.

Thanks again,
Zach
_________________
“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
---avatar cropped from =AimanStudio---