Bug 14879

Summary:	Addition of Interlingua locale
Product:	glibc	Reporter:	law
Component:	localedata	Assignee:	Andreas Jaeger <aj>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	normal	CC:	aj, bugdal, csolisr, libc-locales, mistresssilvara, nik.kalach
Priority:	P2	Flags:	fweimer: security-
Version:	2.17
Target Milestone:	---
Host:		Target:
Build:		Last reconfirmed:
Attachments:	Patch to add Interlingua locale from Nik Kalach (nik.kalach@inbox.ru) Patch for ChangeLog, SUPPORTED and the ia_FR locale

Description law 2012-11-26 14:30:35 UTC

Created attachment 6755 [details]
Patch to add Interlingua locale from Nik Kalach (nik.kalach@inbox.ru)

The current glibc package and the upstream glibc do not include Interlingua locale for any region. A lot of Fedora programs like Anaconda, system-config-language and Publican depend from the presence of the correct locale in the system. For these programs it is not enough just to set up the LANGUAGE environment variable to localize the interface. Anaconda and system-config-language perform system locale configuration themselves and do not support setting of the LANGUAGE variable in /etc/locale.conf or /etc/sysconfig/i18n.
Anaconda, Firstboot, system-config-language, s-c-time and s-c-keyboard are translated to Interlingua but the lack of the Interlingua locale creates usability problem or, in case of Anaconda and s-c-language, it does not allow the programs to operate as expected.

Fedora documentation and Web-site use Publican for formatting. All necessary Interlingua localizations are available but Publican cannot use them without the locale. As a result, Fedora documentation in Interlingua cannot be built in the standard Fedora Project build environment.

To solve these problems I propose to add an attached patch to the glibc package. It adds the ia_FR locale.

Supporting information for this locale is following:
1. The ISO-639-1 code for the language: "ia"
2. Languages of France:
   http://www.ethnologue.com/15/show_country.asp?name=FR
3. The leading Interlingua association "Union Mundial pro Interlingua" 
   is registered as a French non-profit association. Registration #0911004931
   http://www.interlingua.com/statutos
4. The locale data are available in CLDR.
5. The ethnological information is available here:
   Gordon, Raymond G. (ed.). 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 15 edn.
   http://www.ethnologue.com/15/web.asp (09 July, 2008.)
   This source specifies the geography for this language as "France"
   See: http://multitree.org/trees/17702.xml
6. Interlingua is registered by IANA with subtag "ia".
   See http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry
7. General information about the language and its history is available here:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua

Comment 1 Carlos Solís 2012-11-26 20:15:24 UTC

The developers of glibc have repeatedly stated that artificial languages will never be supported. See bugs #711, #2135 and #13190 for details. However, it could be requested that the decision is overturned, at least for the artificial languages with a code established by the ISO 639 (namely Esperanto [EO], Ido [IO], Novial [NV], Interlingua [IA], Interlingue-Occidental [IE], Lojban [JBO] and Volapük [VO]). The only issue would be to assign these a country.

Comment 2 Nik Kalach 2012-11-26 22:47:00 UTC

Please, consider this BZ report as a request to overturn the decision not to support Interlingua just because this is an artificial language. Interlingua satisfies the criteria you have mentioned: it has the ISO code. Moreover, it has CLDR data, dictionaries for multiple languages, published grammar, literature, periodics, and active users. It was not invented by some random people, it was derived from 7 major natural languages by the group of professional linguists after 20 years of work. The language is based on the international vocabulary and the minimal grammar common to the most of the source languages. As a result, texts in Interlingua are easy to read and Interlingua can be used as a gateway language to study other languages and as a pivot language in the educational project like Sugar.

As you can see from the initial submission, Interlingua is listed as one of the languages of France by the well respected source of the ethnological information.

Comment 3 Carlos Solís 2012-11-27 00:21:53 UTC

I will also take this space to highlight that the three major auxiliary languages (Esperanto, Ido, and Interlingua) all have active speaking communities worldwide, as well as several books, periodic publications and active websites and communities. Also, each of these languages have over a century of history each, with organized active authorities for the evolution of each language, and stable grammar and vocabulary based upon the most important languages of their time. By means of this request, I also ask the developers to reconsider the related bugs that I quoted.

Comment 4 Rich Felker 2012-11-27 04:16:07 UTC

I second the request to reopen the issue. Obviously toy artificial languages like Klingon should not be under discussion to be added, but the unilateral rule against "artificial" languages being added at all is not only misguided; it's inconsistently enforced. I'm pretty sure at least a few "real" languages would have to be removed if we insisted on banning any language that was created by linguists for sociopolitical purposes (in the sense of uniting or dividing peoples) -- and even more if you look back far enough into their histories. If a language has an ISO code and any significant number of speakers, I see no reason it should be treated as less-acceptable for inclusion than any other language with the same number of speakers.

Comment 5 Andreas Jaeger 2012-11-27 21:30:43 UTC

Jeff, I would be fine with adding this but let's discuss on libc-alpha.

Please send a patch (including ChangeLog entry and changes for SUPPORTED) and ask for comments.

Thanks,
Andreas

Comment 6 Nik Kalach 2012-11-27 21:55:02 UTC

Created attachment 6760 [details]
Patch for ChangeLog, SUPPORTED and the ia_FR locale

Added the complete patch with changes to ChangeLog, SUPPORTED and the content of the locale.

Comment 7 Andreas Jaeger 2012-11-29 07:34:15 UTC

Thanks, committed for glibc 2.17

commit d92865823859d4e804d8ac5e5f74fb0f31a54091
Author: Nik Kalach <nikka@fedoraproject.org>
Date:   Thu Nov 29 08:31:13 2012 +0100

    Add Interlingua locale
    
        [BZ#14879]
        * locales/ia_FR : New file
        * SUPPORTED (SUPPORTED-LOCALES): Add appropriate entry.

Comment 8 -EMail Hidden- 2012-12-13 10:37:26 UTC

That is outrageous.
First, you are adding crap made-up languages which no one speaks, and yet refuse to add a locale for the RUSSIAN language which alone has more text data written in it than all these interlingua clowns will be able to produce together for 100 years?

The decision on the bug 12624 reeks of Russophobia in this case.

Comment 9 Dmitry V. Levin 2012-12-13 12:39:23 UTC

(In reply to comment #8)
> That is outrageous.

No, this is offtopic, please do not bring it here.

> First, you are adding crap made-up languages which no one speaks,

First of all, you shall avoid telling blatant lies, otherwise you will not be listened here.

> The decision on the bug 12624

This bug is not bug 12624, you see.  If you like to discuss bug 12624, please bring your arguments there.