NLS(7) | Miscellaneous Information Manual | NLS(7)

# NAME

`NLS` — Native Language Support Overview

# DESCRIPTION

Native Language Support (NLS) provides commands for a single worldwide operating system base. An internationalized system has no built-in assumptions or dependencies on language-specific or cultural-specific conventions such as:

- Character classifications
- Character comparison rules
- Character collation order
- Numeric and monetary formatting
- Date and time formatting
- Message-text language
- Character sets

All information pertaining to cultural conventions and language is obtained at program run time.

“Internationalization” (often abbreviated “i18n”) refers to the operation by which system software is developed to support multiple cultural-specific and language-specific conventions. This is a generalization process by which the system is untied from calling only English strings or other English-specific conventions. “Localization” (often abbreviated “l10n”) refers to the operations by which the user environment is customized to handle its input and output appropriate for specific language and cultural conventions. This is a specialization process, by which generic methods already implemented in an internationalized system are used in specific ways. The formal description of cultural conventions for some country, together with all associated translations targeted to the native language, is called the “locale”.

NetBSD provides extensive support to programmers and system developers to enable internationalized software to be developed. NetBSD also supplies a large variety of locales for system localization.

## Localization of Information

All locale information is accessible to programs at run time so that data is processed and displayed correctly for specific cultural conventions and language.

A locale is divided into categories. A category is a group of language-specific and culture-specific conventions as outlined in the list above. ISO C specifies the following six standard categories supported by NetBSD:

`LC_COLLATE`
  string-collation order information
`LC_CTYPE`
  character classification, case conversion, and other character attributes
`LC_MESSAGES`
  the format for affirmative and negative responses
`LC_MONETARY`
  rules and symbols for formatting monetary numeric information
`LC_NUMERIC`
  rules and symbols for formatting nonmonetary numeric information
`LC_TIME`
  rules and symbols for formatting time and date information

Localization of the system is achieved by setting appropriate values in environment variables to identify which locale should be used. The environment variables have the same names as their respective locale categories. Additionally, the `LANG`, `LC_ALL`, and `NLSPATH` environment variables are used. The `NLSPATH` environment variable specifies a colon-separated list of directory names where the message catalog files of the NLS database are located. The `LC_ALL` and `LANG` environment variables also determine the current locale.

The values of these environment variables contains a string format as:

    	language[_territory][.codeset][@modifier]

Valid values for the language field come from the ISO639 standard which defines two-character codes for many languages. Some common language codes are:

Language Name | Code | Language Family
ABKHAZIAN | AB | IBERO-CAUCASIAN
AFAN (OROMO) | OM | HAMITIC
AFAR | AA | HAMITIC
AFRIKAANS | AF | GERMANIC
ALBANIAN | SQ | INDO-EUROPEAN (OTHER)
AMHARIC | AM | SEMITIC
ARABIC | AR | SEMITIC
ARMENIAN | HY | INDO-EUROPEAN (OTHER)
ASSAMESE | AS | INDIAN
AYMARA | AY | AMERINDIAN
AZERBAIJANI | AZ | TURKIC/ALTAIC
BASHKIR | BA | TURKIC/ALTAIC
BASQUE | EU | BASQUE
BENGALI | BN | INDIAN
BHUTANI | DZ | ASIAN
BIHARI | BH | INDIAN
BISLAMA | BI |
BRETON | BR | CELTIC
BULGARIAN | BG | SLAVIC
BURMESE | MY | ASIAN
BYELORUSSIAN | BE | SLAVIC
CAMBODIAN | KM | ASIAN
CATALAN | CA | ROMANCE
CHINESE | ZH | ASIAN
CORSICAN | CO | ROMANCE
CROATIAN | HR | SLAVIC
CZECH | CS | SLAVIC
DANISH | DA | GERMANIC
DUTCH | NL | GERMANIC
ENGLISH | EN | GERMANIC
ESPERANTO | EO | INTERNATIONAL AUX.
ESTONIAN | ET | FINNO-UGRIC
FAROESE | FO | GERMANIC
FIJI | FJ | OCEANIC/INDONESIAN
FINNISH | FI | FINNO-UGRIC
FRENCH | FR | ROMANCE
FRISIAN | FY | GERMANIC
GALICIAN | GL | ROMANCE
GEORGIAN | KA | IBERO-CAUCASIAN
GERMAN | DE | GERMANIC
GREEK | EL | LATIN/GREEK
GREENLANDIC | KL | ESKIMO
GUARANI | GN | AMERINDIAN
GUJARATI | GU | INDIAN
HAUSA | HA | NEGRO-AFRICAN
HEBREW | HE | SEMITIC
HINDI | HI | INDIAN
HUNGARIAN | HU | FINNO-UGRIC
ICELANDIC | IS | GERMANIC
INDONESIAN | ID | OCEANIC/INDONESIAN
INTERLINGUA | IA | INTERNATIONAL AUX.
INTERLINGUE | IE | INTERNATIONAL AUX.
INUKTITUT | IU |
INUPIAK | IK | ESKIMO
IRISH | GA | CELTIC
ITALIAN | IT | ROMANCE
JAPANESE | JA | ASIAN
JAVANESE | JV | OCEANIC/INDONESIAN
KANNADA | KN | DRAVIDIAN
KASHMIRI | KS | INDIAN
KAZAKH | KK | TURKIC/ALTAIC
KINYARWANDA | RW | NEGRO-AFRICAN
KIRGHIZ | KY | TURKIC/ALTAIC
KURUNDI | RN | NEGRO-AFRICAN
KOREAN | KO | ASIAN
KURDISH | KU | IRANIAN
LAOTHIAN | LO | ASIAN
LATIN | LA | LATIN/GREEK
LATVIAN | LV | BALTIC
LINGALA | LN | NEGRO-AFRICAN
LITHUANIAN | LT | BALTIC
MACEDONIAN | MK | SLAVIC
MALAGASY | MG | OCEANIC/INDONESIAN
MALAY | MS | OCEANIC/INDONESIAN
MALAYALAM | ML | DRAVIDIAN
MALTESE | MT | SEMITIC
MAORI | MI | OCEANIC/INDONESIAN
MARATHI | MR | INDIAN
MOLDAVIAN | MO | ROMANCE
MONGOLIAN | MN |
NAURU | NA |
NEPALI | NE | INDIAN
NORWEGIAN | NO | GERMANIC
OCCITAN | OC | ROMANCE
ORIYA | OR | INDIAN
PASHTO | PS | IRANIAN
PERSIAN (farsi) | FA | IRANIAN
POLISH | PL | SLAVIC
PORTUGUESE | PT | ROMANCE
PUNJABI | PA | INDIAN
QUECHUA | QU | AMERINDIAN
RHAETO-ROMANCE | RM | ROMANCE
ROMANIAN | RO | ROMANCE
RUSSIAN | RU | SLAVIC
SAMOAN | SM | OCEANIC/INDONESIAN
SANGHO | SG | NEGRO-AFRICAN
SANSKRIT | SA | INDIAN
SCOTS GAELIC | GD | CELTIC
SERBIAN | SR | SLAVIC
SERBO-CROATIAN | SH | SLAVIC
SESOTHO | ST | NEGRO-AFRICAN
SETSWANA | TN | NEGRO-AFRICAN
SHONA | SN | NEGRO-AFRICAN
SINDHI | SD | INDIAN
SINGHALESE | SI | INDIAN
SISWATI | SS | NEGRO-AFRICAN
SLOVAK | SK | SLAVIC
SLOVENIAN | SL | SLAVIC
SOMALI | SO | HAMITIC
SPANISH | ES | ROMANCE
SUNDANESE | SU | OCEANIC/INDONESIAN
SWAHILI | SW | NEGRO-AFRICAN
SWEDISH | SV | GERMANIC
TAGALOG | TL | OCEANIC/INDONESIAN
TAJIK | TG | IRANIAN
TAMIL | TA | DRAVIDIAN
TATAR | TT | TURKIC/ALTAIC
TELUGU | TE | DRAVIDIAN
THAI | TH | ASIAN
TIBETAN | BO | ASIAN
TIGRINYA | TI | SEMITIC
TONGA | TO | OCEANIC/INDONESIAN
TSONGA | TS | NEGRO-AFRICAN
TURKISH | TR | TURKIC/ALTAIC
TURKMEN | TK | TURKIC/ALTAIC
TWI | TW | NEGRO-AFRICAN
UIGUR | UG |
UKRAINIAN | UK | SLAVIC
URDU | UR | INDIAN
UZBEK | UZ | TURKIC/ALTAIC
VIETNAMESE | VI | ASIAN
VOLAPUK | VO | INTERNATIONAL AUX.
WELSH | CY | CELTIC
WOLOF | WO | NEGRO-AFRICAN
XHOSA | XH | NEGRO-AFRICAN
YIDDISH | YI | GERMANIC
YORUBA | YO | NEGRO-AFRICAN
ZHUANG | ZA |
ZULU | ZU | NEGRO-AFRICAN

For example, the locale for the Danish language spoken in Denmark using the ISO 8859-1 character set is da_DK.ISO8859-1. The da stands for the Danish language and the DK stands for Denmark. The short form of da_DK is sufficient to indicate this locale.

The environment variable settings are queried by their priority level in the following manner:

- If the `LC_ALL` environment variable is set, all six categories use the locale it specifies.
- If the `LC_ALL` environment variable is not set, each individual category uses the locale specified by its corresponding environment variable.
- If the `LC_ALL` environment variable is not set, and a value for a particular `LC_*` environment variable is not set, the value of the `LANG` environment variable specifies the default locale for all categories. Only the `LANG` environment variable should be set in /etc/profile, since it makes it most easy for the user to override the system default using the individual `LC_*` variables.
- If the `LC_ALL` environment variable is not set, a value for a particular `LC_*` environment variable is not set, and the value of the `LANG` environment variable is not set, the locale for that specific category defaults to the C locale. The C or POSIX locale assumes the ASCII character set and defines information for the six categories.

## Character Sets

A character is any symbol used for the organization, control, or representation of data. A group of such symbols used to describe a particular language make up a character set. It is the encoding values in a character set that provide the interface between the system and its input and output devices.

The following character sets are supported in NetBSD:

ASCII
  The American Standard Code for Information Exchange (ASCII) standard specifies 128 Roman characters and control codes, encoded in a 7-bit character encoding scheme.
ISO 8859 family
  Industry-standard character sets specified by the ISO/IEC 8859 standard. The standard is divided into 15 numbered parts, with each part specifying broad script similarities. Examples include Western European, Central European, Arabic, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Greek, and Turkish. The character sets use an 8-bit character encoding scheme which is compatible with the ASCII character set.
Unicode
  The Unicode character set is the full set of known abstract characters of all real-world scripts. It can be used in environments where multiple scripts must be processed simultaneously. Unicode is compatible with ISO 8859-1 (Western European) and ASCII. Many character encoding schemes are available for Unicode, including UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32. These encoding schemes are multi-byte encodings. The UTF-8 encoding scheme uses 8-bit, variable-width encodings which is compatible with ASCII. The UTF-16 encoding scheme uses 16-bit, variable-width encodings. The UTF-32 encoding scheme using 32-bit, fixed-width encodings.

## Font Sets

A font set contains the glyphs to be displayed on the screen for a corresponding character in a character set. A display must support a suitable font to display a character set. If suitable fonts are available to the X server, then X clients can include support for different character sets. xterm(1) includes support for Unicode with UTF-8 encoding. xfd(1) is useful for displaying all the characters in an X font.

The NetBSD wscons(4) console provides support for loading fonts using the wsfontload(8) utility. Currently, only fonts for the ISO8859-1 family of character sets are supported.

## Internationalization for Programmers

To facilitate translations of messages into various languages and to make the translated messages available to the program based on a user's locale, it is necessary to keep messages separate from the programs and provide them in the form of message catalogs that a program can access at run time.

Access to locale information is provided through the setlocale(3) and nl_langinfo(3) interfaces. See their respective man pages for further information.

Message source files containing application messages are created by the programmer and converted to message catalogs. These catalogs are used by the application to retrieve and display messages, as needed.

NetBSD supports two message catalog interfaces: the X/Open catgets(3) interface and the Uniforum gettext(3) interface. The catgets(3) interface has the advantage that it belongs to a standard which is well supported. Unfortunately the interface is complicated to use and maintenance of the catalogs is difficult. The implementation also doesn't support different character sets. The gettext(3) interface has not been standardized yet, however it is being supported by an increasing number of systems. It also provides many additional tools which make programming and catalog maintenance much easier.

## Support for Multi-byte Encodings

Some character sets with multi-byte encodings may be difficult to decode, or may contain state (i.e., adjacent characters are dependent). ISO C specifies a set of functions using 'wide characters' which can handle multi-byte encodings properly. The behaviour of these functions is affected by the `LC_CTYPE` category of the current locale.

A wide character is specified in ISO C as being a fixed number of bits wide and is stateless. There are two types for wide characters: wchar_t and wint_t. wchar_t is a type which can contain one wide character and operates like 'char' type does for one character. wint_t can contain one wide character or WEOF (wide EOF).

There are functions that operate on wchar_t, and substitute for functions operating on 'char'. See wmemchr(3) and towlower(3) for details. There are some additional functions that operate on wchar_t. See wctype(3) and wctrans(3) for details.

Wide characters should be used for all I/O processing which may rely on locale-specific strings. The two primary issues requiring special use of wide characters are:

- All I/O is performed using multibyte characters. Input data is converted into wide characters immediately after reading and data for output is converted from wide characters to multi-byte encoding immediately before writing. Conversion is controlled by the mbstowcs(3), mbsrtowcs(3), wcstombs(3), wcsrtombs(3), mblen(3), mbrlen(3), and mbsinit(3).
- Wide characters are used directly for I/O, using getwchar(3), fgetwc(3), getwc(3), ungetwc(3), fgetws(3), putwchar(3), fputwc(3), putwc(3), and fputws(3). They are also used for formatted I/O functions for wide characters such as fwscanf(3), wscanf(3), swscanf(3), fwprintf(3), wprintf(3), swprintf(3), vfwprintf(3), vwprintf(3), and vswprintf(3), and wide character identifier of %lc, %C, %ls, %S for conventional formatted I/O functions.

# SEE ALSO

gencat(1), xfd(1), xterm(1), catgets(3), gettext(3), nl_langinfo(3), setlocale(3), wsfontload(8)

# BUGS

This man page is incomplete.

February 21, 2007 | NetBSD 11.0