Defining LANG= to only the language when nothing else is known: is it valid?

[Etienne Lorrain <etienne_lorrain at yahoo dot fr>]

 Hello,

 From my bootloader (http://gujin.org) I know at least the language used to display
messages (it is just a compile time option now, and only two languages are defined:
english and french for now). I would like to tell for instance the Linux kernel
that language, so that I shall not click five times when installing a PC with three
distributions that I am speaking english/french/... I think that that information
is good to share, and in Linux you can set a kernel parameter like LANG=en_US which
is transfered to the environment.

 But I cannot tell the "territory" part of LANG, nor the charset used, nor what will
be supported by the installation of the distribution later on (the .utf8 things).
So right know I am passing as Linux parameter "LANG=en" or "LANG=fr", taking
references like:
http://docs.hp.com/en/B2355-90131/environ.5.html
   The format of LANG is: 
       LANG=language[_territory][.codeset]
It seems to clearly say the _territory part is optional.

 The problem is that few application are complaining of invalid value of LANG, and do
not even try to complete by adding the territory available in their system: it would
be logical that when LANG=en and the only locale installed is en_US to used that (with
or without .utf8), and when only en_GB is defined to use it.

 Comments? Am I on the right mailling list?

 Thanks,
 Etienne.


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