locale-en-nl

English language locale for the Netherlands (en_NL)

Introduction

Many users who are physically located in the Netherlands use software in the American English language. Most of them are native Dutch speakers working in IT, but this also applies for non-Dutch expats in the Netherlands. In their work they usually have their systems configured to US English International. However, due to the geographic location or territory they reside in, it can be highly desirable for certain data to be represented according to the local Dutch notation, while the rest remains in English.

It is possible to configure a system by setting a mix of LC sections of different locales. For example the LC_MONETARY of en_US and LC_TIME of nl_NL. Nevertheless, it is not possible to mix on section level only to get a proper locale with English language in the Netherlands territory. This requires a custom locale to correctly set fields in the sections LC_MONETARY, LC_TIME and LC_ADDRESS.

For this reason the locale called en_NL has been created. It is based on the locale en_US and has some carefully mixed parts from nl_NL. Note that this specific configuration is impossible to obtain by using locale nl_NL and setting LANGUAGES to en or other mixed LC section usage. This justifies an en_NL locace and having it supported by glibc.

Please, see comments starting with "%% use" in the file en_NL how each section has been composed. For more comprehensible comparison, see the section on validation below.

If you support the inclusion of en_NL in glibc, please endorse it at https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14085

Installation

Install the locale en_NL with ./install.sh or running the command from that script manually.

Validation

Examine the generated TXT-files with fldiff nl_NL.txt en_NL.txt and fldiff en_US.txt en_NL.txt In the directory comparison are screenshots of these colored diffs.

These files have been generated with the ./validate.sh script after installation.

Commands

List the locales contained in the locale archive file.

localedef --list-archive

Show current settings of the system locale and keyboard mapping.

localectl status

List available locales useful for configuration with set-locale.

localectl list-locales


more /etc/default/locale
more /etc/locale.gen
more /etc/locale.alias

Documentation

• Glibc locales

• Glibc locale en_US

• Glibc locale nl_NL

• Locale validation tools

• Documentation strftime for Linux

• Documentation strftime for Linux

• Documentation strftime for Linux

• man pages:

  • locale(1)
  • locale(5)
  • locale(7)
  • localedef(1)
  • lovalectl(1)
  • locale.conf(5)

See also

• Presentation NLUUG fall 2016 English locale for the Netherlands (en_NL)

• Glibc bug 14085 - en_NL: new locale (English language for the Netherlands)

• Glibc bug 17823 - gdb CLI cannot recognize floating point numbers if LC_NUMERIC environment variable is set to nl_NL.UTF-8

• Glibc bug 19198 - nl_NL: small improvements for Dutch locales

• Glibc bug 22043 - *_NL: add country_isbn

• Glibc bug 22535 - en_DE: New locale

• Glibc bug 23831 - nl_NL missing LC_NUMERIC thousands_sep

• Glibc bug 23857 - Esperanto has no country

• Glibc bug 23996 - Dutch salutations

• all open bugs

• https://lh.2xlibre.net/locale/nds_NL/

• https://lh.2xlibre.net/locale/li_NL/

• https://lh.2xlibre.net/locale/fy_NL/

• https://lh.2xlibre.net/locale/nl_NL/

To do for other locales

The following minor improvemens for others locales that still need to be done are:

• replace tel_dom_fmt in nl_NL locale from "" to "0%a-%l"