intl: Clarify the role and the contents of locale.alias.
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Commit Message
* intl/localealias.c: Explain the form and the purpose of the locale.alias file.
* intl/locale.alias: Don't state that this file is obsolete. Instead, two groups
of entries are obsolete, for different reasons.
---
intl/locale.alias | 18 +++++++++++-------
intl/localealias.c | 25 +++++++++++++++++++++++++
2 files changed, 36 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)
@@ -19,12 +19,10 @@
# /usr/lib/X11/locale/locale.alias
# A single line contains two fields: an alias and a substitution value.
# All entries are case independent.
+# Lines that start with '#' are comment lines.
-# Note: This file is obsolete and is kept around for the time being for
-# backward compatibility. Nobody should rely on the names defined here.
-# Locales should always be specified by their full name.
-
-# Note: This file used to contain the following lines:
+# Note: This file should only contain ASCII characters. It used to
+# contain the following lines:
# bokmaal nb_NO.ISO-8859-1
# franc,ais fr_FR.ISO-8859-1
# except that the "aa" was actually the byte '\0xE5' (the Latin-1
@@ -35,6 +33,9 @@
# which broke applications in UTF-8 locales. See:
# https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=18412
+# The following entries are obsolete. They date back to 1996-2000, when
+# it was not customary to use real locale names. Locales should nowadays
+# always be specified by their full name.
bokmal nb_NO.ISO-8859-1
catalan ca_ES.ISO-8859-1
croatian hr_HR.ISO-8859-2
@@ -65,8 +66,6 @@ korean ko_KR.eucKR
korean.euc ko_KR.eucKR
ko_KR ko_KR.eucKR
lithuanian lt_LT.ISO-8859-13
-no_NO nb_NO.ISO-8859-1
-no_NO.ISO-8859-1 nb_NO.ISO-8859-1
norwegian nb_NO.ISO-8859-1
nynorsk nn_NO.ISO-8859-1
polish pl_PL.ISO-8859-2
@@ -80,3 +79,8 @@ spanish es_ES.ISO-8859-1
swedish sv_SE.ISO-8859-1
thai th_TH.TIS-620
turkish tr_TR.ISO-8859-9
+
+# The following entries are obsolete. They date back to the transition
+# from the ISO 639 language code 'no' to 'nb', in 2003.
+no_NO nb_NO.ISO-8859-1
+no_NO.ISO-8859-1 nb_NO.ISO-8859-1
@@ -14,6 +14,31 @@
You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. */
+/* Locale aliases can be specified in the file $(localedir)/locale.alias.
+ It consists of lines of the form
+ <alias> <real-locale-name>
+ Lines that start with '#' are comment lines.
+
+ The main purpose of locale aliases is allow a seamless transition when
+ a locale is replaced by another one, and the users still want to use
+ the old locale name in their .profile scripts and elsewhere.
+ This typically happens when
+ (a) The ISO 639 language code of a language changes. For example,
+ around 2003, the no_NO locale was withdrawn in favour of two
+ separate locales nb_NO and nn_NO. Users in Norway could have
+ used the alias
+ no_NO.UTF-8 nb_NO.UTF-8
+ or
+ no_NO.UTF-8 nn_NO.UTF-8
+ depending on the language they speak.
+ (b) The ISO 3166 country code of a territory changes. For example,
+ users in South Sudan saw their ISO 3166 country code change from
+ SD to SS in 2011, and their locale name changed from ar_SD.UTF-8
+ to ar_SS.UTF-8 in 2013 accordingly. During the transition, they
+ may have used the alias
+ ar_SD.UTF-8 ar_SS.UTF-8
+ */
+
/* Tell glibc's <string.h> to provide a prototype for mempcpy().
This must come before <config.h> because <config.h> may include
<features.h>, and once <features.h> has been included, it's too late. */