On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 12:06 AM, Heiko Baums <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> Of course, that's the point of LC_MESSAGES. What else would it do? > > Well, actually I would expect that the language is set by LANG and not > by LC_MESSAGES. I would expect, and I guess this is what it's meant for, > that just the output on stdout or stderr is affected by LC_MESSAGES. > That is, that LC_MESSAGES only sets the console output of CLI programs, > but not the language of the whole desktop environment like Xfce and all > the GUI programs. What was the sense of LANG otherwise? It makes sense to me that any text is in whatever locale LC_MESSAGES specifes, regardless of where it is being printed. The point of LANG is to be a default for all the LC_* variables that are not set. The exception is LC_ALL which overrides everything, and is (afaik) only meant to be set at runtime for debugging purposes. -t
