Localization settings are based on three components: the language code, country code, and encoding. Locale names are constructed from these parts as follows:
LanguageCode
_CountryCode
.Encoding
The LanguageCode
and
CountryCode
are used to determine
the country and the specific language variation. Table 22.1, “Common Language and Country Codes” provides some examples of
LanguageCode
_CountryCode
:
LanguageCode_Country Code | Description |
---|---|
en_US | English, United States |
ru_RU | Russian, Russia |
zh_TW | Traditional Chinese, Taiwan |
A complete listing of available locales can be found by typing:
%
locale -a | more
To determine the current locale setting:
%
locale
Language specific character sets, such as ISO8859-1, ISO8859-15, KOI8-R, and CP437, are described in multibyte(3). The active list of character sets can be found at the IANA Registry.
Some languages, such as Chinese or Japanese, cannot be represented using ASCII characters and require an extended language encoding using either wide or multibyte characters. Examples of wide or multibyte encodings include EUC and Big5. Older applications may mistake these encodings for control characters while newer applications usually recognize these characters. Depending on the implementation, users may be required to compile an application with wide or multibyte character support, or to configure it correctly.
FreeBSD uses Xorg-compatible locale encodings.
The rest of this section describes the various methods for configuring the locale on a FreeBSD system. The next section will discuss the considerations for finding and compiling applications with i18n support.
Locale settings are configured either in a user's
~/.login_conf
or in the startup file of the user's shell:
~/.profile
,
~/.bashrc
, or
~/.cshrc
.
Two environment variables should be set:
In addition to the user's shell configuration, these variables should also be set for specific application configuration and Xorg configuration.
Two methods are available for making the needed variable assignments: the login class method, which is the recommended method, and the startup file method. The next two sections demonstrate how to use both methods.
This first method is the recommended method as it assigns the required environment variables for locale name and MIME character sets for every possible shell. This setup can either be performed by each user or it can be configured for all users by the superuser.
This minimal example sets both variables for Latin-1
encoding in the .login_conf
of an
individual user's home directory:
me:\ :charset=ISO-8859-1:\ :lang=de_DE.ISO8859-1:
Here is an example of a user's
~/.login_conf
that sets the variables
for Traditional Chinese in BIG-5 encoding. More variables
are needed because some applications do not correctly
respect locale variables for Chinese, Japanese, and
Korean:
#Users who do not wish to use monetary units or time formats #of Taiwan can manually change each variable me:\ :lang=zh_TW.Big5:\ :setenv=LC_ALL=zh_TW.Big5,LC_COLLATE=zh_TW.Big5,LC_CTYPE=zh_TW.Big5,LC_MESSAGES=zh_TW.Big5,LC_MONETARY=zh_TW.Big5,LC_NUMERIC=zh_TW.Big5,LC_TIME=zh_TW.Big5:\ :charset=big5:\ :xmodifiers="@im=gcin": #Set gcin as the XIM Input Server
Alternately, the superuser can configure all users of
the system for localization. The following variables in
/etc/login.conf
are used to set the
locale and MIME character set:
language_name
|Account Type Description
:\ :charset=MIME_charset
:\ :lang=locale_name
:\ :tc=default:
So, the previous Latin-1 example would look like this:
german|German Users Accounts:\ :charset=ISO-8859-1:\ :lang=de_DE.ISO8859-1:\ :tc=default:
See login.conf(5) for more details about these
variables. Note that it already contains pre-defined
russian
class.
Whenever /etc/login.conf
is edited,
remember to execute the following command to update the
capability database:
#
cap_mkdb /etc/login.conf
For an end user, the cap_mkdb
command will
need to be run on their ~/.login_conf
for
any changes to take effect.
In addition to manually editing
/etc/login.conf
, several utilities
are available for setting the locale for newly created
users.
When using vipw
to add new users,
specify the language
to set the
locale:
user:password:1111:11:language
:0:0:User Name:/home/user:/bin/sh
When using adduser
to add new
users, the default language can be pre-configured for all
new users or specified for an individual user.
If all new users use the same language, set
defaultclass=
in
language
/etc/adduser.conf
.
To override this setting when creating a user, either input the required locale at this prompt:
Enter login class: default []:
or specify the locale to set when invoking
adduser
:
#
adduser -class
language
If pw
is used to add new users,
specify the locale as follows:
#
pw useradd
user_name
-Llanguage
To change the login class of an existing user,
chpass
can be used. Invoke it as
superuser and provide the username to edit as the
argument.
#
chpass
user_name
This second method is not recommended as each shell
that is used requires manual configuration, where each
shell has a different configuration file and differing
syntax. As an example, to set the German language for the
sh
shell, these lines could be added to
~/.profile
to set the shell for that
user only. These lines could also be added to
/etc/profile
or
/usr/share/skel/dot.profile
to set
that shell for all users:
LANG
=de_DE.ISO8859-1; exportLANG
MM_CHARSET
=ISO-8859-1; exportMM_CHARSET
However, the name of the configuration file and the
syntax used differs for the csh
shell.
These are the equivalent settings for
~/.csh.login
,
/etc/csh.login
, or
/usr/share/skel/dot.login
:
setenvLANG
de_DE.ISO8859-1 setenvMM_CHARSET
ISO-8859-1
To complicate matters, the syntax needed to configure
Xorg in
~/.xinitrc
also depends upon the
shell. The first example is for the sh
shell and the second is for the csh
shell:
LANG
=de_DE.ISO8859-1; exportLANG
setenv LANG
de_DE.ISO8859-1
Several localized fonts are available for the console. To
see a listing of available fonts, type
ls /usr/share/syscons/fonts
. To configure
the console font, specify the
font_name
,
without the .fnt
suffix, in
/etc/rc.conf
:
font8x16=font_name
font8x14=font_name
font8x8=font_name
The keymap and screenmap can be set by adding the
following to /etc/rc.conf
:
scrnmap=screenmap_name
keymap=keymap_name
keychange="fkey_number sequence
"
To see the list of available screenmaps, type
ls /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps
. Do not
include the .scm
suffix when specifying
screenmap_name
. A screenmap with a
corresponding mapped font is usually needed as a workaround
for expanding bit 8 to bit 9 on a VGA adapter's font character
matrix so that letters are moved out of the pseudographics
area if the screen font uses a bit 8 column.
To see the list of available keymaps, type
ls /usr/share/syscons/keymaps
. When
specifying the keymap_name
, do not
include the .kbd
suffix. To test
keymaps without rebooting,
use kbdmap(1).
The keychange
entry is usually needed
to program function keys to match the selected terminal type
because function key sequences cannot be defined in the
keymap.
Next, set the correct console terminal type in
/etc/ttys
for all virtual terminal
entries. Table 22.2, “Defined Terminal Types for Character Sets” summarizes the
available terminal types.:
Character Set | Terminal Type |
---|---|
ISO8859-1 or ISO8859-15 | cons25l1 |
ISO8859-2 | cons25l2 |
ISO8859-7 | cons25l7 |
KOI8-R | cons25r |
KOI8-U | cons25u |
CP437 (VGA default) | cons25 |
US-ASCII | cons25w |
For languages with wide or multibyte characters, install a
console for that language from the FreeBSD Ports Collection. The
available ports are summarized in Table 22.3, “Available Console from Ports Collection”. Once installed, refer to the
port's pkg-message
or man pages for
configuration and usage instructions.
Language | Port Location |
---|---|
Traditional Chinese (BIG-5) | chinese/big5con |
Chinese/Japanese/Korean | chinese/cce |
Chinese/Japanese/Korean | chinese/zhcon |
Japanese | chinese/kon2 |
Japanese | japanese/kon2-14dot |
Japanese | japanese/kon2-16dot |
If moused is enabled in
/etc/rc.conf
, additional configuration
may be required. By default, the mouse cursor of the
syscons(4) driver occupies the
0xd0
-0xd3
range in the
character set. If the language uses this range, move the
cursor's range by adding the
following line to /etc/rc.conf
:
mousechar_start=3
Chapter 5, The X Window System describes how to install and
configure Xorg. When configuring
Xorg for localization, additional
fonts and input methods are available from the FreeBSD Ports
Collection. Application specific i18n
settings such as fonts and menus can be tuned in
~/.Xresources
and should allow users to
view their selected language in graphical application
menus.
The X Input Method (XIM) protocol is an Xorg standard for inputting non-English characters. Table 22.4, “Available Input Methods” summarizes the input method applications which are available in the FreeBSD Ports Collection. Additional Fcitx and Uim applications are also available.
Language | Input Method |
---|---|
Chinese | chinese/gcin |
Chinese | chinese/ibus-chewing |
Chinese | chinese/ibus-pinyin |
Chinese | chinese/oxim |
Chinese | chinese/scim-fcitx |
Chinese | chinese/scim-pinyin |
Chinese | chinese/scim-tables |
Japanese | japanese/ibus-anthy |
Japanese | japanese/ibus-mozc |
Japanese | japanese/ibus-skk |
Japanese | japanese/im-ja |
Japanese | japanese/kinput2 |
Japanese | japanese/scim-anthy |
Japanese | japanese/scim-canna |
Japanese | japanese/scim-honoka |
Japanese | japanese/scim-honoka-plugin-romkan |
Japanese | japanese/scim-honoka-plugin-wnn |
Japanese | japanese/scim-prime |
Japanese | japanese/scim-skk |
Japanese | japanese/scim-tables |
Japanese | japanese/scim-tomoe |
Japanese | japanese/scim-uim |
Japanese | japanese/skkinput |
Japanese | japanese/skkinput3 |
Japanese | japanese/uim-anthy |
Korean | korean/ibus-hangul |
Korean | korean/imhangul |
Korean | korean/nabi |
Korean | korean/scim-hangul |
Korean | korean/scim-tables |
Vietnamese | vietnamese/xvnkb |
Vietnamese | vietnamese/x-unikey |
All FreeBSD documents are available for download at https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/doc/
Questions that are not answered by the
documentation may be
sent to <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org>.
Send questions about this document to <freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org>.