Locale

>>
>> That preference also (if someone enabled it in their image) used to set the local time zone on startup. We now have a different mechanism for that, which continuously tracks the system???s time zone across daylight savings and location changes. This can be disabled by ???DateAndTime automaticTimezone: false???.
>>
>> Chris is proposing to enable the useLocale preference, and make the timezone updating dependent on it, instead of having a separate preference for that. This is to support users who may have been setting their locale manually, or used that preference to enable timezone updating, and are not aware of the new preference. The useLocale preference would govern both the automatic time zone setting in DateAndTime and the use of Locale plugin for language setting at startup.
>>
>> What do you all think?
>>
>
> In general, I do not like adding more preferences, period. That said, the
> preferences that we do have should produce some effect that I as a user can
> understand, and they should be documented accordingly.
>
> The help message for #automaticTimezone explains what the preference does,
> and preference does with the help message says. That is good.
>
> The help message for useLocale says "Use the system locale to set the
> system language etc at startup". That is also clear, but as a user I would
> have no way of guessing that an additional side effect would be to control
> time zone behavior.

>>> On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 03:52:57PM -0800, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>>>> We do have a preference useLocale that governs whether the Locale plugin should be used. If enabled, the system tries to load translation files on startup. Only Etoys ever shipped with translations, so this fails in a squeak.org image. That???s why the preference was off in all releases.
>>
>> My understanding is that the concept of Locale is supposed to be a nice way to gather up a bunch of preferences (currency symbol & format, number formatting, favourite breakfast item, etc) which seems like a good way to simplify the preferences setting dance.
>>
>> The fact that one part - the language translation files - isn’t supported completely doesn’t seem like it should stop us using the rest. Just handle being unable to load them!
>
> Thank you, yes, Squeak has lots of bugs, but we still use Squeak.  However...
>
> --- snip ---
>
>> The general definition of Locale used in software is the Posix standard which doesn’t include the timezone (which I must admit puzzles me a little, but what do I know?)
>
> Wow.  I just checked and, you're right.  Although Merriam-Webster's
> definition of Locale:
>
>    "a place or locality especially when viewed in relation to a
> particular event or characteristic"
>
> would definitely be inclusive of Timezone and DST events, Wikipedia's
> definition explicitly states:
>
>    "The locale settings are about formatting output given a locale.
> So, the timezone information and daylight saving time are not usually
> part of the locale settings..."
>
> Again, I say "wow" because, wikipedia's definition is actually
> *further* from Websters definition than the reverse.  A lot of people
> speak multiple languages and, therefore, probably deal in multiple
> currency symbols, so currency-symbol is as much a function of WHO as
> it is of WHERE.
>
> But Timezone's and DST events are definitely a function of WHERE.  Period.
>
> Okay then.  Crazy, but, okay.  At least we have some basis, somewhere,
> (wikipedia), for what appeared to me to be a random exclusion from our
> Locale setting...
>
> However, because of your and my surprise, I still will make an update
> to the preference description text to ensure future users are aware
> that TZ is controlled by a separate preference.
>
>> So my suggestion is to have an auto-tz option and ability to set a specific TZ for whatever reason, and to make locales work even when the translation file(s) may be missing.
>
> Agree.
>

> Not having done any research on this, I find it quite logical that the
> locale does not determine the timezone. Actually, I would assume it to
> not determine the language either. My Windows currently runs with the
> German locale (number and date formats) but the language is English
> (text labels, program names). That is inconsistent, but I find it
> convenient -- matter of taste. And if I travelled to some other part
> of the world, I would like to adjust the timezone setting to match the
> local time, but I would not want to change the language or the
> formatting procedures.
>
> Nevertheless it might be desirable to have something like Tim
> suggested, "a way to gather up a bunch of preferences", so you could
> turn one knob to make the image feel like home for a Chinese user
> (Chinese locale and Chinese as a language), for example.