option for specifying lanugage?

[Werner Koch]

On Wed, 12 Apr 2000, sen_ml@eccosys.com wrote:

> wk> $ LANG=it gpg foo
> 
> wk> (assuming a Bourne/POSIX shell)
> 

> one of the paragraphs in my original message that you did not quote
> mentions the fact that at least one program (i presume there are more)
> has been written to process english gnupg messages.  assuming that

No program should process GnuPG messages; programs should use the
output of --status-fd.  If a program needs to process the messages it
should reset the locale variables.  The test scripts for example do
this.

>   -having the program forcibly specify /bin/sh seems like a
>    waste of starting up an extra process

Giving environment variables for a program is part of the shell
syntax.  No extra process.

>   -forcing the user to set an environment variable every time they use gpg 
>    doesn't make sense

I can't see a reason to have just gpg emit English messages and other
programs use the locale message version.

>   -having the program try to detect which shell the user uses seems silly

Every script uses /bin/sh - it's Posix.  Adding just an option to
reset an environment variable is no good design IMHO.  I know that you
will now say something about --homedir vs. GNUPGHOME :-(

  Werner


-- 
Werner Koch				OpenPGP key 621CC013
OpenIT GmbH                             tel +49 211 239577-0
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