Hi guys,

Sorry to bother you again with my confusion, but I'm trying to implement
systemwide locales settings, and it would seem there's a difference in the
available locales between Gentoo and my old Mandrake...

For instance, on this computer here - which runs the already archaic
Mandrake 10.0 PowerPack Edition - I have /en_BE/ as a possible locale, i.e.
using the English language but residing in Belgium. Gentoo doesn't appear
to have that, and as far as my interpretation of the /man/ page
for /localedef/ goes, I see no way to create this locale in Gentoo.

In addition, the output of the /locale/ command on Gentoo - in the /chroot/
environment - states that everything is set to "POSIX" as a value, but what
exactly does that mean? Is it a dummy placeholder? Is it yet another
setting? The Gentoo manuals don't quite cover things, or at least not in a
way that I can understand. :-/

What gives?
--
Aragorn
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

Aragorn wrote:

> Hi guys,
>
> Sorry to bother you again with my confusion, but I'm trying to implement
> systemwide locales settings, and it would seem there's a difference in the
> available locales between Gentoo and my old Mandrake...

It might not solve your doubts, but did you reed the gentoo localization
guide?

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/guide-localization.xml

Aragorn wrote:

> Hi guys,
>
> Sorry to bother you again with my confusion, but I'm trying to implement
> systemwide locales settings, and it would seem there's a difference in the
> available locales between Gentoo and my old Mandrake...

It might not solve your doubts, but did you reed the gentoo localization
guide?

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/guide-localization.xml

pk wrote:

> Aragorn wrote:
>
>> Hi guys,
>>
>> Sorry to bother you again with my confusion, but I'm trying to implement
>> systemwide locales settings, and it would seem there's a difference in
>> the available locales between Gentoo and my old Mandrake...
>
> It might not solve your doubts, but did you reed the gentoo localization
> guide?
>
> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/guide-localization.xml

Yes, I have it open in a browser on this computer while I'm working at the
other one. Yet the localization guide does not answer my questions. It
just tells me to do a few things without thoroughly explaining what it is
that I should be doing. :-/

Basically, I want to set up my system as follows... The machine is
geographically located in Belgium, and I use a Belgian "azerty" keyboard.
I would like to make use of some Belgian/European standards, but I do want
the machine to interface with me in the English language as that is the
language I mainly use, and as computer output messages translated in any
language are typically prone to have lots of errors in them.

I've been setting up my computers in English for years, but the only distro
I've ever used on my own computers so far is Mandrake - now called Mandriva
- and obviously they have different locales options. In addition - and
this is a first for me - I want to use UTF-8 throughout the entire system,
from consoles and commandline tools to GUI applications.

At this stage, I'm still in the /chroot/ environment - due to circumstances,
I've only had little time every day so far to set up Gentoo, and when I'm
done doing that, I'll still have a few other hurdles to overcome, such as
setting it up with Xen - see the thread labeled "Just a few Gentoo
pre-install questions" - and setting up the virtual machines, three of
them, and all pretty different from one another.

Yet, in this /chroot/ environment, despite my choosing a Belgian "azerty"
keyboard, I already noticed that the Euro sign for instance is not
available - on a Belgian keyboard, you would press /AltGr+E/ to obtain it -
and all the LC_ values are set to "POSIX", for whatever that means.

The Gentoo localization guide and the manual don't explain to me what this
value stands for, nor how to set up the locales that I have on my Mandrake
systems.

Again, it might be my Asperger Syndrome, but I'm under the impression that
the Gentoo manuals (1) really need updating and (2) tell you what to do
without telling you *why* you should be doing it or what it is that they're
telling you what to do, and furthermore that the advice in the manuals and
certain things in the distribution itself are (3) based upon Joe Average's
typical choices, not upon what the *best* choices would be.

I guess it's just an illustration of how the folks currently running the
Gentoo Foundation have drifted so far off the original course that they're
basically making the distribution the way it is because it's easier this
way for them, without consideration for the users. Well, I'm not the only
one who says that, either; Daniel Robbins seems to be genuinely concerned
about this - understandable, since he's the one who started the whole
Gentoo initiative in the first place. :-/

My apologies if I seem to be ranting, but I've been using GNU/Linux
exclusively for over 8 years already so I'm not exactly a newbie, yet
Gentoo has me quite confused... :-/

--
Aragorn
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

pk wrote:

> Aragorn wrote:
>
>> Hi guys,
>>
>> Sorry to bother you again with my confusion, but I'm trying to implement
>> systemwide locales settings, and it would seem there's a difference in
>> the available locales between Gentoo and my old Mandrake...
>
> It might not solve your doubts, but did you reed the gentoo localization
> guide?
>
> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/guide-localization.xml

Yes, I have it open in a browser on this computer while I'm working at the
other one. Yet the localization guide does not answer my questions. It
just tells me to do a few things without thoroughly explaining what it is
that I should be doing. :-/

Basically, I want to set up my system as follows... The machine is
geographically located in Belgium, and I use a Belgian "azerty" keyboard.
I would like to make use of some Belgian/European standards, but I do want
the machine to interface with me in the English language as that is the
language I mainly use, and as computer output messages translated in any
language are typically prone to have lots of errors in them.

I've been setting up my computers in English for years, but the only distro
I've ever used on my own computers so far is Mandrake - now called Mandriva
- and obviously they have different locales options. In addition - and
this is a first for me - I want to use UTF-8 throughout the entire system,
from consoles and commandline tools to GUI applications.

At this stage, I'm still in the /chroot/ environment - due to circumstances,
I've only had little time every day so far to set up Gentoo, and when I'm
done doing that, I'll still have a few other hurdles to overcome, such as
setting it up with Xen - see the thread labeled "Just a few Gentoo
pre-install questions" - and setting up the virtual machines, three of
them, and all pretty different from one another.

Yet, in this /chroot/ environment, despite my choosing a Belgian "azerty"
keyboard, I already noticed that the Euro sign for instance is not
available - on a Belgian keyboard, you would press /AltGr+E/ to obtain it -
and all the LC_ values are set to "POSIX", for whatever that means.

The Gentoo localization guide and the manual don't explain to me what this
value stands for, nor how to set up the locales that I have on my Mandrake
systems.

Again, it might be my Asperger Syndrome, but I'm under the impression that
the Gentoo manuals (1) really need updating and (2) tell you what to do
without telling you *why* you should be doing it or what it is that they're
telling you what to do, and furthermore that the advice in the manuals and
certain things in the distribution itself are (3) based upon Joe Average's
typical choices, not upon what the *best* choices would be.

I guess it's just an illustration of how the folks currently running the
Gentoo Foundation have drifted so far off the original course that they're
basically making the distribution the way it is because it's easier this
way for them, without consideration for the users. Well, I'm not the only
one who says that, either; Daniel Robbins seems to be genuinely concerned
about this - understandable, since he's the one who started the whole
Gentoo initiative in the first place. :-/

My apologies if I seem to be ranting, but I've been using GNU/Linux
exclusively for over 8 years already so I'm not exactly a newbie, yet
Gentoo has me quite confused... :-/

--
Aragorn
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

Aragorn wrote:

>> It might not solve your doubts, but did you reed the gentoo localization
>> guide?
>>
>> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/guide-localization.xml
>
> Yes, I have it open in a browser on this computer while I'm working at the
> other one. Yet the localization guide does not answer my questions. It
> just tells me to do a few things without thoroughly explaining what it is
> that I should be doing. :-/
>
> Basically, I want to set up my system as follows... The machine is
> geographically located in Belgium, and I use a Belgian "azerty" keyboard.
> I would like to make use of some Belgian/European standards, but I do want
> the machine to interface with me in the English language as that is the
> language I mainly use, and as computer output messages translated in any
> language are typically prone to have lots of errors in them.

Ok, that is a fairly common situation.

> - and obviously they have different locales options. In addition - and
> this is a first for me - I want to use UTF-8 throughout the entire system,
> from consoles and commandline tools to GUI applications.

Clear. Keep in mind that you'll need supporting application and fonts (at
least) to do that. You also might find the gentoo utf-8 guide (which you
probably already know anyway) helpful:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/utf-8.xml

> At this stage, I'm still in the /chroot/ environment - due to
> circumstances, I've only had little time every day so far to set up
> Gentoo, and when I'm done doing that, I'll still have a few other hurdles
> to overcome, such as setting it up with Xen - see the thread labeled "Just
> a few Gentoo pre-install questions" - and setting up the virtual machines,
> three of them, and all pretty different from one another.
>
> Yet, in this /chroot/ environment, despite my choosing a Belgian "azerty"
> keyboard, I already noticed that the Euro sign for instance is not
> available - on a Belgian keyboard, you would press /AltGr+E/ to obtain it
> - and all the LC_ values are set to "POSIX", for whatever that means.

I can't find a reason to have the need to use the euro symbol (or any other
special symbol, for that matter) during installation. Also, the symbol
might be missing due to the barebone settings of the installation
environment.

> The Gentoo localization guide and the manual don't explain to me what this
> value stands for, nor how to set up the locales that I have on my Mandrake
> systems.

Locales are not gentoo-specific, and are covered by glibc's documentation.

http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/man...e/Locales.html

The locale* commands are explained in their corresponding man pages.

I suggest you finish the install with your current settings, and customize
the system only after the first reboot.

Set your keyboard in /etc/conf.d/keymaps for the console (IIUC, you'll
probably want be-latin1), and /etc/X11/xorg.conf for X. If you want further
info, read X.org docs.

Use /etc/locale.gen (man locale.gen) to set the locales you want to build.
You can have more than one locale defined. In your case, you might possibly
want just the following line:

en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

since UTF-8 provides the euro symbol (and a lot more, of course).

You can define other locales in that file, and switch between them changing
LC_ALL and LANG in /etc/env.d/02locale, followed by env-update &&
source /etc/profile (and yes, this is Gentoo-specific, but the way it works
is intuitive and, anyhow, is explained in the handbook:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handboo...part=2&chap=5).

> Again, it might be my Asperger Syndrome, but I'm under the impression that
> the Gentoo manuals (1) really need updating and (2) tell you what to do
> without telling you *why* you should be doing it or what it is that
> they're telling you what to do, and furthermore that the advice in the
> manuals and certain things in the distribution itself are (3) based upon
> Joe Average's typical choices, not upon what the *best* choices would be.

(note: the "you" in what follows is generic and is not meant to refer to you
or anyone in particular)

Might be, but keep in mind the following points:

- as I said above, many things are already covered by their respective docs
(not Gentoo-specific). One of the (IMHO) strenghts of Gentoo is that most
packages are used almost "as they are", without the heavy patching and
customization done by other distros; so, the original docs for the packages
almost always apply directly to Gentoo;

- http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/list.xml?desc=1 lists a number of (official)
documents for doing almost everything one can imagine with Gentoo; also,
upgrades which require particular care (eg, gcc, X, glibc) are almost
always documented there with detailed steps;

- http://www.gentoo-wiki.com (apparently currently unavailable) also has
many interesting articles. Of course, being user-written documentation,
quality may vary;

- it is also true that with Gentoo nearly each and every detail of the
system can be customized and tweaked at will, *if* you are willing to do so
and are willing to spend some time to read the docs (not only Gentoo docs)
and learn how things work instead of just complaining and go asking others
to solve your problems;

<personal_opinion>
If you are not that kind of person, then Gentoo is not for you. This is the
price to pay for being able to do things yourself the way you want, instead
of relying on others (other distros) doing things for you the way they
want. The reward is that you learn lots of things that would otherwise
remain opaque.
Also, I usually like to suggest that a Gentoo system is best appreciated if
you are coming from LFS, or have done at least an LFS install in the past.
</personal_opinion>

- Gentoo has (IMHO) one of the best user communities around. Post a question
on gentoo-user, and odds are that you'll get an answer by knowledgeable
people, provided you demonstrate the good attitude described above (and
sometimes even if you don't). You can learn lots of things about Gentoo
just by reading answers to the questions asked to the mailing lists;

- you are of course free to report any bug you encounter (even in the
documentation!). Just go to http://bugs.gentoo.org and create an account.
There is also a bugzilla-howto among the documents in the list mentioned
above.

> I guess it's just an illustration of how the folks currently running the
> Gentoo Foundation have drifted so far off the original course that they're
> basically making the distribution the way it is because it's easier this
> way for them, without consideration for the users. Well, I'm not the only
> one who says that, either; Daniel Robbins seems to be genuinely concerned
> about this - understandable, since he's the one who started the whole
> Gentoo initiative in the first place. :-/

You are not alone. The state of Gentoo leadership and Gentoo's future are
currently being debated in many places. Subscribe to some gentoo-* mailing
lists (especially -dev) and join (or just enjoy) the party :-)

Aragorn wrote:

>> It might not solve your doubts, but did you reed the gentoo localization
>> guide?
>>
>> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/guide-localization.xml
>
> Yes, I have it open in a browser on this computer while I'm working at the
> other one. Yet the localization guide does not answer my questions. It
> just tells me to do a few things without thoroughly explaining what it is
> that I should be doing. :-/
>
> Basically, I want to set up my system as follows... The machine is
> geographically located in Belgium, and I use a Belgian "azerty" keyboard.
> I would like to make use of some Belgian/European standards, but I do want
> the machine to interface with me in the English language as that is the
> language I mainly use, and as computer output messages translated in any
> language are typically prone to have lots of errors in them.

Ok, that is a fairly common situation.

> - and obviously they have different locales options. In addition - and
> this is a first for me - I want to use UTF-8 throughout the entire system,
> from consoles and commandline tools to GUI applications.

Clear. Keep in mind that you'll need supporting application and fonts (at
least) to do that. You also might find the gentoo utf-8 guide (which you
probably already know anyway) helpful:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/utf-8.xml

> At this stage, I'm still in the /chroot/ environment - due to
> circumstances, I've only had little time every day so far to set up
> Gentoo, and when I'm done doing that, I'll still have a few other hurdles
> to overcome, such as setting it up with Xen - see the thread labeled "Just
> a few Gentoo pre-install questions" - and setting up the virtual machines,
> three of them, and all pretty different from one another.
>
> Yet, in this /chroot/ environment, despite my choosing a Belgian "azerty"
> keyboard, I already noticed that the Euro sign for instance is not
> available - on a Belgian keyboard, you would press /AltGr+E/ to obtain it
> - and all the LC_ values are set to "POSIX", for whatever that means.

I can't find a reason to have the need to use the euro symbol (or any other
special symbol, for that matter) during installation. Also, the symbol
might be missing due to the barebone settings of the installation
environment.

> The Gentoo localization guide and the manual don't explain to me what this
> value stands for, nor how to set up the locales that I have on my Mandrake
> systems.

Locales are not gentoo-specific, and are covered by glibc's documentation.

http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/man...e/Locales.html

The locale* commands are explained in their corresponding man pages.

I suggest you finish the install with your current settings, and customize
the system only after the first reboot.

Set your keyboard in /etc/conf.d/keymaps for the console (IIUC, you'll
probably want be-latin1), and /etc/X11/xorg.conf for X. If you want further
info, read X.org docs.

Use /etc/locale.gen (man locale.gen) to set the locales you want to build.
You can have more than one locale defined. In your case, you might possibly
want just the following line:

en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

since UTF-8 provides the euro symbol (and a lot more, of course).

You can define other locales in that file, and switch between them changing
LC_ALL and LANG in /etc/env.d/02locale, followed by env-update &&
source /etc/profile (and yes, this is Gentoo-specific, but the way it works
is intuitive and, anyhow, is explained in the handbook:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handboo...part=2&chap=5).

> Again, it might be my Asperger Syndrome, but I'm under the impression that
> the Gentoo manuals (1) really need updating and (2) tell you what to do
> without telling you *why* you should be doing it or what it is that
> they're telling you what to do, and furthermore that the advice in the
> manuals and certain things in the distribution itself are (3) based upon
> Joe Average's typical choices, not upon what the *best* choices would be.

(note: the "you" in what follows is generic and is not meant to refer to you
or anyone in particular)

Might be, but keep in mind the following points:

- as I said above, many things are already covered by their respective docs
(not Gentoo-specific). One of the (IMHO) strenghts of Gentoo is that most
packages are used almost "as they are", without the heavy patching and
customization done by other distros; so, the original docs for the packages
almost always apply directly to Gentoo;

- http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/list.xml?desc=1 lists a number of (official)
documents for doing almost everything one can imagine with Gentoo; also,
upgrades which require particular care (eg, gcc, X, glibc) are almost
always documented there with detailed steps;

- http://www.gentoo-wiki.com (apparently currently unavailable) also has
many interesting articles. Of course, being user-written documentation,
quality may vary;

- it is also true that with Gentoo nearly each and every detail of the
system can be customized and tweaked at will, *if* you are willing to do so
and are willing to spend some time to read the docs (not only Gentoo docs)
and learn how things work instead of just complaining and go asking others
to solve your problems;

<personal_opinion>
If you are not that kind of person, then Gentoo is not for you. This is the
price to pay for being able to do things yourself the way you want, instead
of relying on others (other distros) doing things for you the way they
want. The reward is that you learn lots of things that would otherwise
remain opaque.
Also, I usually like to suggest that a Gentoo system is best appreciated if
you are coming from LFS, or have done at least an LFS install in the past.
</personal_opinion>

- Gentoo has (IMHO) one of the best user communities around. Post a question
on gentoo-user, and odds are that you'll get an answer by knowledgeable
people, provided you demonstrate the good attitude described above (and
sometimes even if you don't). You can learn lots of things about Gentoo
just by reading answers to the questions asked to the mailing lists;

- you are of course free to report any bug you encounter (even in the
documentation!). Just go to http://bugs.gentoo.org and create an account.
There is also a bugzilla-howto among the documents in the list mentioned
above.

> I guess it's just an illustration of how the folks currently running the
> Gentoo Foundation have drifted so far off the original course that they're
> basically making the distribution the way it is because it's easier this
> way for them, without consideration for the users. Well, I'm not the only
> one who says that, either; Daniel Robbins seems to be genuinely concerned
> about this - understandable, since he's the one who started the whole
> Gentoo initiative in the first place. :-/

You are not alone. The state of Gentoo leadership and Gentoo's future are
currently being debated in many places. Subscribe to some gentoo-* mailing
lists (especially -dev) and join (or just enjoy) the party :-)

pk wrote:

> Aragorn wrote:
>

>> At this stage, I'm still in the /chroot/ environment - due to
>> circumstances, I've only had little time every day so far to set up
>> Gentoo, and when I'm done doing that, I'll still have a few other hurdles
>> to overcome, such as setting it up with Xen - see the thread labeled
>> "Just a few Gentoo pre-install questions" - and setting up the virtual
>> machines, three of them, and all pretty different from one another.
>>
>> Yet, in this /chroot/ environment, despite my choosing a Belgian "azerty"
>> keyboard, I already noticed that the Euro sign for instance is not
>> available - on a Belgian keyboard, you would press /AltGr+E/ to obtain it
>> - and all the LC_ values are set to "POSIX", for whatever that means.
>
> I can't find a reason to have the need to use the euro symbol (or any
> other special symbol, for that matter) during installation. Also, the
> symbol might be missing due to the barebone settings of the installation
> environment.

Yes, of course, I apologize. I did not mean to say that I needed the Euro
symbol during installation; it was just a test to see what gave,
considering that all LC_* values are set to "POSIX" as a value, for
whatever that means.

(I know what POSIX is of course, but I don't know what the value "POSIX"
means in relation to LC_* settings)

>> The Gentoo localization guide and the manual don't explain to me what
>> this value stands for, nor how to set up the locales that I have on my
>> Mandrake systems.
>
> Locales are not gentoo-specific, and are covered by glibc's documentation.
>
> http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/man...e/Locales.html
>
> The locale* commands are explained in their corresponding man pages.
>
> I suggest you finish the install with your current settings, and customize
> the system only after the first reboot.
>
> Set your keyboard in /etc/conf.d/keymaps for the console (IIUC, you'll
> probably want be-latin1), and /etc/X11/xorg.conf for X. If you want
> further info, read X.org docs.
>
> Use /etc/locale.gen (man locale.gen) to set the locales you want to build.
> You can have more than one locale defined. In your case, you might
> possibly want just the following line:
>
> en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
>
> since UTF-8 provides the euro symbol (and a lot more, of course).
>
> You can define other locales in that file, and switch between them
> changing LC_ALL and LANG in /etc/env.d/02locale, followed by env-update &&
> source /etc/profile (and yes, this is Gentoo-specific, but the way it
> works is intuitive and, anyhow, is explained in the handbook:
> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handboo...part=2&chap=5).

I have copied your reply to my Drafts folder - by current lack of another
folder - so that I'll have a reference, including the links you pasted, for
when my ISP's newsserver drops the articles. ;-)

>> Again, it might be my Asperger Syndrome, but I'm under the impression
>> that the Gentoo manuals (1) really need updating and (2) tell you what to
>> do without telling you *why* you should be doing it or what it is that
>> they're telling you what to do, and furthermore that the advice in the
>> manuals and certain things in the distribution itself are (3) based upon
>> Joe Average's typical choices, not upon what the *best* choices would be.
>
> (note: the "you" in what follows is generic and is not meant to refer to
> you or anyone in particular)
>
> Might be, but keep in mind the following points:
>
> - as I said above, many things are already covered by their respective
> docs (not Gentoo-specific). One of the (IMHO) strenghts of Gentoo is that
> most packages are used almost "as they are", without the heavy patching
> and customization done by other distros; so, the original docs for the
> packages almost always apply directly to Gentoo;
>
> - http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/list.xml?desc=1 lists a number of
> (official) documents for doing almost everything one can imagine with
> Gentoo; also, upgrades which require particular care (eg, gcc, X, glibc)
> are almost always documented there with detailed steps;
>
> - http://www.gentoo-wiki.com (apparently currently unavailable) also has
> many interesting articles. Of course, being user-written documentation,
> quality may vary;
>
> - it is also true that with Gentoo nearly each and every detail of the
> system can be customized and tweaked at will, *if* you are willing to do
> so and are willing to spend some time to read the docs (not only Gentoo
> docs) and learn how things work instead of just complaining and go asking
> others to solve your problems;

My main reason for choosing Gentoo is the fact that I want to tailor the
code to my hardware. I have also been considering LFS, but that one seems
to leave me with too much work and it's not really up-to-date anymore by
now - new kernel versions, newer /glibc/ and /gcc,/ etc.

> <personal_opinion>
> If you are not that kind of person, then Gentoo is not for you. This is
> the price to pay for being able to do things yourself the way you want,
> instead of relying on others (other distros) doing things for you the way
> they want. The reward is that you learn lots of things that would
> otherwise remain opaque.
> Also, I usually like to suggest that a Gentoo system is best appreciated
> if you are coming from LFS, or have done at least an LFS install in the
> past. </personal_opinion>

.... Which is the step I haven't taken so far. ;-)

> - Gentoo has (IMHO) one of the best user communities around. Post a
> question on gentoo-user, and odds are that you'll get an answer by
> knowledgeable people, provided you demonstrate the good attitude described
> above (and sometimes even if you don't). You can learn lots of things
> about Gentoo just by reading answers to the questions asked to the mailing
> lists;
>
> - you are of course free to report any bug you encounter (even in the
> documentation!). Just go to http://bugs.gentoo.org and create an account.
> There is also a bugzilla-howto among the documents in the list mentioned
> above.

Okay, I'll keep that in mind. :-)

>> I guess it's just an illustration of how the folks currently running the
>> Gentoo Foundation have drifted so far off the original course that
>> they're basically making the distribution the way it is because it's
>> easier this way for them, without consideration for the users. Well, I'm
>> not the only one who says that, either; Daniel Robbins seems to be
>> genuinely concerned about this - understandable, since he's the one who
>> started the whole Gentoo initiative in the first place. :-/
>
> You are not alone. The state of Gentoo leadership and Gentoo's future are
> currently being debated in many places. Subscribe to some gentoo-* mailing
> lists (especially -dev) and join (or just enjoy) the party :-)

Your advice is heeded, thank you. :-)

--
Aragorn
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

pk wrote:

> Aragorn wrote:
>

>> At this stage, I'm still in the /chroot/ environment - due to
>> circumstances, I've only had little time every day so far to set up
>> Gentoo, and when I'm done doing that, I'll still have a few other hurdles
>> to overcome, such as setting it up with Xen - see the thread labeled
>> "Just a few Gentoo pre-install questions" - and setting up the virtual
>> machines, three of them, and all pretty different from one another.
>>
>> Yet, in this /chroot/ environment, despite my choosing a Belgian "azerty"
>> keyboard, I already noticed that the Euro sign for instance is not
>> available - on a Belgian keyboard, you would press /AltGr+E/ to obtain it
>> - and all the LC_ values are set to "POSIX", for whatever that means.
>
> I can't find a reason to have the need to use the euro symbol (or any
> other special symbol, for that matter) during installation. Also, the
> symbol might be missing due to the barebone settings of the installation
> environment.

Yes, of course, I apologize. I did not mean to say that I needed the Euro
symbol during installation; it was just a test to see what gave,
considering that all LC_* values are set to "POSIX" as a value, for
whatever that means.

(I know what POSIX is of course, but I don't know what the value "POSIX"
means in relation to LC_* settings)

>> The Gentoo localization guide and the manual don't explain to me what
>> this value stands for, nor how to set up the locales that I have on my
>> Mandrake systems.
>
> Locales are not gentoo-specific, and are covered by glibc's documentation.
>
> http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/man...e/Locales.html
>
> The locale* commands are explained in their corresponding man pages.
>
> I suggest you finish the install with your current settings, and customize
> the system only after the first reboot.
>
> Set your keyboard in /etc/conf.d/keymaps for the console (IIUC, you'll
> probably want be-latin1), and /etc/X11/xorg.conf for X. If you want
> further info, read X.org docs.
>
> Use /etc/locale.gen (man locale.gen) to set the locales you want to build.
> You can have more than one locale defined. In your case, you might
> possibly want just the following line:
>
> en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
>
> since UTF-8 provides the euro symbol (and a lot more, of course).
>
> You can define other locales in that file, and switch between them
> changing LC_ALL and LANG in /etc/env.d/02locale, followed by env-update &&
> source /etc/profile (and yes, this is Gentoo-specific, but the way it
> works is intuitive and, anyhow, is explained in the handbook:
> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handboo...part=2&chap=5).

I have copied your reply to my Drafts folder - by current lack of another
folder - so that I'll have a reference, including the links you pasted, for
when my ISP's newsserver drops the articles. ;-)

>> Again, it might be my Asperger Syndrome, but I'm under the impression
>> that the Gentoo manuals (1) really need updating and (2) tell you what to
>> do without telling you *why* you should be doing it or what it is that
>> they're telling you what to do, and furthermore that the advice in the
>> manuals and certain things in the distribution itself are (3) based upon
>> Joe Average's typical choices, not upon what the *best* choices would be.
>
> (note: the "you" in what follows is generic and is not meant to refer to
> you or anyone in particular)
>
> Might be, but keep in mind the following points:
>
> - as I said above, many things are already covered by their respective
> docs (not Gentoo-specific). One of the (IMHO) strenghts of Gentoo is that
> most packages are used almost "as they are", without the heavy patching
> and customization done by other distros; so, the original docs for the
> packages almost always apply directly to Gentoo;
>
> - http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/list.xml?desc=1 lists a number of
> (official) documents for doing almost everything one can imagine with
> Gentoo; also, upgrades which require particular care (eg, gcc, X, glibc)
> are almost always documented there with detailed steps;
>
> - http://www.gentoo-wiki.com (apparently currently unavailable) also has
> many interesting articles. Of course, being user-written documentation,
> quality may vary;
>
> - it is also true that with Gentoo nearly each and every detail of the
> system can be customized and tweaked at will, *if* you are willing to do
> so and are willing to spend some time to read the docs (not only Gentoo
> docs) and learn how things work instead of just complaining and go asking
> others to solve your problems;

My main reason for choosing Gentoo is the fact that I want to tailor the
code to my hardware. I have also been considering LFS, but that one seems
to leave me with too much work and it's not really up-to-date anymore by
now - new kernel versions, newer /glibc/ and /gcc,/ etc.

> <personal_opinion>
> If you are not that kind of person, then Gentoo is not for you. This is
> the price to pay for being able to do things yourself the way you want,
> instead of relying on others (other distros) doing things for you the way
> they want. The reward is that you learn lots of things that would
> otherwise remain opaque.
> Also, I usually like to suggest that a Gentoo system is best appreciated
> if you are coming from LFS, or have done at least an LFS install in the
> past. </personal_opinion>

.... Which is the step I haven't taken so far. ;-)

> - Gentoo has (IMHO) one of the best user communities around. Post a
> question on gentoo-user, and odds are that you'll get an answer by
> knowledgeable people, provided you demonstrate the good attitude described
> above (and sometimes even if you don't). You can learn lots of things
> about Gentoo just by reading answers to the questions asked to the mailing
> lists;
>
> - you are of course free to report any bug you encounter (even in the
> documentation!). Just go to http://bugs.gentoo.org and create an account.
> There is also a bugzilla-howto among the documents in the list mentioned
> above.

Okay, I'll keep that in mind. :-)

>> I guess it's just an illustration of how the folks currently running the
>> Gentoo Foundation have drifted so far off the original course that
>> they're basically making the distribution the way it is because it's
>> easier this way for them, without consideration for the users. Well, I'm
>> not the only one who says that, either; Daniel Robbins seems to be
>> genuinely concerned about this - understandable, since he's the one who
>> started the whole Gentoo initiative in the first place. :-/
>
> You are not alone. The state of Gentoo leadership and Gentoo's future are
> currently being debated in many places. Subscribe to some gentoo-* mailing
> lists (especially -dev) and join (or just enjoy) the party :-)

Your advice is heeded, thank you. :-)

--
Aragorn
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

Aragorn wrote:

> Hi guys,
>
> Sorry to bother you again with my confusion, but I'm trying to implement
> systemwide locales settings, and it would seem there's a difference in the
> available locales between Gentoo and my old Mandrake...

I seem to have run into another little mystery here for which neither the
documentation nor Google provide any useful help...

In the file */etc/conf.d/keymaps,* there is a variable /EXTENDED_KEYMAPS./
By default it is set to "", but an alternative value underneath which is
commented out lists "backspace keypad euro" as example values.

Can anyone tell me what those values mean, or at least what "backspace" and
"keypad" mean there? (I suppose I know what "euro" means.)

--
Aragorn
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)