[Rd] Internationalization questions

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Mon, 22 Aug 2005, John Fox wrote:

> Dear Brian,
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Prof Brian Ripley [mailto:ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk]
>> Sent: 22 août 2005 01:47
>> To: John Fox
>> Cc: r-devel at stat.math.ethz.ch
>> Subject: Re: [Rd] Internationalization questions
>>
>> On Sun, 21 Aug 2005, John Fox wrote:
>>
>>> Dear R-devel list members:
>>>
>>> I have two internationalization questions, related to
>> questions that I
>>> posed previously. These pertain to Windows (I've tried under Win XP
>>> but assume the issue is more general) and R 2.1.1 patched
>> and 2.2.0 devel.
>>>
>>> (1) I've noticed that the standard Windows dialogs in R -- whether
>>> initiated from the Rgui menus, from winDialog(), or from tcltk
>>> functions such as
>>> tkmessageBox() -- do not have button labels translated when
>> running in
>>> a non-English locale. For example, when running in a French locale,
>>> the command
>>>
>>>  winDialog(type="yesnocancel", message=gettext("Save workspace
>>> image?",
>>> domain="RGui"))
>>>
>>> produces a dialog box with the message translated to
>> "Sauver une image
>>> de la session?", but the buttons still read "Yes", "No",
>> and "Cancel".
>>>
>>> Is this the intended behaviour?  Is there any way to get the button
>>> text translated? I've implemented a partial solution that uses a
>>> substitute for tkmessageBox(), but it is a bit awkward.
>>
>> You need to have Windows set to be in French dialogs, not
>> just the locale set to French.  This is on the second page of
>> the Regional settings doalogs in WinXP.  It is intended, as
>> it makes all Windows dialogs work consistently.  (You can
>> have different settings on the three pages, but not all
>> combinations work successfully -- the current rw-FAQ has some
>> comments.)
>>
>
> On my XP system, the tabs are (in order) Regional Options, Languages, and
> Advanced. I have now set all three to "French (Canada)" -- including in the
> subdialog produced by the Details button under Languages, and rebooted. I
> still get English button labels.

At the bottom of the Languages tab there is a setting for `menus and 
dialogs'.  I got a short list of languages, e.g. 'francais' for that item. 
You have to log out and log in again to make a change stick (and it tells 
you that.)  That does work for me (and I tested it again before answering 
you, and have also tested Italian in the past).  I wonder if you have had 
to have used that language in a past reboot to make this work ....

Brian

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595