20.3. Using Localization

20.3.1. Language and Country Codes

In order to localize a FreeBSD system to a specific language (or any other I18N-supporting UNIX® like systems), the user needs to find out the codes for the specify country and language (country codes tell applications what variation of given language to use). In addition, web browsers, SMTP/POP servers, web servers, etc. make decisions based on them. The following are examples of language/country codes:

20.3.2. Encodings

Some languages use non-ASCII encodings that are 8-bit, wide or multibyte characters, see multibyte(3) for more details. Older applications do not recognize them and mistake them for control characters. Newer applications usually do recognize 8-bit characters. Depending on the implementation, users may be required to compile an application with wide or multibyte characters support, or configure it correctly. To be able to input and process wide or multibyte characters, the FreeBSD Ports Collection has provided each language with different programs. Refer to the I18N documentation in the respective FreeBSD Port.

Specifically, the user needs to look at the application documentation to decide on how to configure it correctly or to pass correct values into the configure/Makefile/compiler.

Some things to keep in mind are:

• Language specific single C chars character sets (see multibyte(3)), e.g. ISO8859-1, ISO8859-15, KOI8-R, CP437.

• Wide or multibyte encodings, e.g. EUC, Big5.

You can check the active list of character sets at the IANA Registry.

20.3.3. I18N Applications

In the FreeBSD Ports and Package system, I18N applications have been named with I18N in their names for easy identification. However, they do not always support the language needed.

20.3.4. Setting Locale

Usually it is sufficient to export the value of the locale name as LANG in the login shell. This could be done in the user's ~/.login_conf file or in the startup file of the user's shell (~/.profile, ~/.bashrc, ~/.cshrc). There is no need to set the locale subsets such as LC_CTYPE, LC_CTIME. Please refer to language-specific FreeBSD documentation for more information.

You should set the following two environment variables in your configuration files:

• LANG for POSIX® setlocale(3) family functions

• MM_CHARSET for applications' MIME character set

This includes the user shell configuration, the specific application configuration, and the X11 configuration.

me:\
    :charset=ISO-8859-1:\
    :lang=de_DE.ISO8859-1:

#Users who do not wish to use monetary units or time formats
#of Taiwan can manually change each variable
me:\
    :lang=zh_TW.Big5:\
    :lc_all=zh_TW.Big:\
    :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=xcin": #Setting the XIM Input Server

language_name:accounts_title:\
    :charset=MIME_charset:\
    :lang=locale_name:\
    :tc=default:

german:German Users Accounts:\
    :charset=ISO-8859-1:\
    :lang=de_DE.ISO8859-1:\
    :tc=default:

# cap_mkdb /etc/login.conf

user:password:1111:11:language:0:0:User Name:/home/user:/bin/sh

# pw useradd user_name -L language

LANG=de_DE.ISO8859-1; export LANG
MM_CHARSET=ISO-8859-1; export MM_CHARSET

setenv LANG de_DE.ISO8859-1
setenv MM_CHARSET ISO-8859-1

LANG=de_DE.ISO8859-1; export LANG

setenv LANG de_DE.ISO8859-1

20.3.5. Console Setup

For all single C chars character sets, set the correct console fonts in /etc/rc.conf for the language in question with:

font8x16=font_name
font8x14=font_name
font8x8=font_name

The font_name here is taken from the /usr/share/syscons/fonts directory, without the .fnt suffix.

Also be sure to set the correct keymap and screenmap for your single C chars character set through sysinstall (/stand/sysinstall in FreeBSD versions older than 5.2). Once inside sysinstall, choose Configure, then Console. Alternatively, you can add the following to /etc/rc.conf:

scrnmap=screenmap_name
keymap=keymap_name
keychange="fkey_number sequence"

The screenmap_name here is taken from the /usr/share/syscons/scrnmaps directory, without the .scm suffix. 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 in pseudographics area, i.e., to move letters out of that area if screen font uses a bit 8 column.

If you have the moused daemon enabled by setting the following in your /etc/rc.conf:

moused_enable="YES"

then examine the mouse cursor information in the next paragraph.

By default the mouse cursor of the syscons(4) driver occupies the 0xd0-0xd3 range in the character set. If your language uses this range, you need to move the cursor's range outside of it. To enable the workaround for FreeBSD, add the following line to /etc/rc.conf:

mousechar_start=3

The keymap_name here is taken from the /usr/share/syscons/keymaps directory, without the .kbd suffix. If you are uncertain which keymap to use, you use can kbdmap(1) to test keymaps without rebooting.

The keychange is usually needed to program function keys to match the selected terminal type because function key sequences cannot be defined in the key map.

Also be sure to set the correct console terminal type in /etc/ttys for all ttyv* entries. Current pre-defined correspondences are:

For wide or multibyte characters languages, use the correct FreeBSD port in your /usr/ports/language directory. Some ports appear as console while the system sees it as serial vtty's, hence you must reserve enough vtty's for both X11 and the pseudo-serial console. Here is a partial list of applications for using other languages in console:

20.3.6. X11 Setup

Although X11 is not part of the FreeBSD Project, we have included some information here for FreeBSD users. For more details, refer to the Xorg web site or whichever X11 Server you use.

In ~/.Xresources, you can additionally tune application specific I18N settings (e.g., fonts, menus, etc.).

20.3.7. Printer Setup

Some single C chars character sets are usually hardware coded into printers. Wide or multibyte character sets require special setup and we recommend using apsfilter. You may also convert the document to PostScript® or PDF formats using language specific converters.

20.3.8. Kernel and File Systems

The FreeBSD fast filesystem (FFS) is 8-bit clean, so it can be used with any single C chars character set (see multibyte(3)), but there is no character set name stored in the filesystem; i.e., it is raw 8-bit and does not know anything about encoding order. Officially, FFS does not support any form of wide or multibyte character sets yet. However, some wide or multibyte character sets have independent patches for FFS enabling such support. They are only temporary unportable solutions or hacks and we have decided to not include them in the source tree. Refer to respective languages' web sites for more information and the patch files.

The FreeBSD MS-DOS® filesystem has the configurable ability to convert between MS-DOS, Unicode character sets and chosen FreeBSD filesystem character sets. See mount_msdos(8) for details.