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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /><title>Localization</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css" type="text/css" /><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.73.2" /><link rel="start" href="index.html" title="Version Control with Subversion" /><link rel="up" href="svn.customization.html" title="Chapter 7. Customizing Your Subversion Experience" /><link rel="prev" href="svn.advanced.confarea.html" title="Runtime Configuration Area" /><link rel="next" href="svn.advanced.externaldifftools.html" title="Using External Differencing and Merge Tools" /></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">Localization</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="svn.advanced.confarea.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">Chapter 7. Customizing Your Subversion Experience</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="svn.advanced.externaldifftools.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr /></div><div class="sect1" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a id="svn.advanced.l10n"></a>Localization</h2></div></div></div><p><em class="firstterm">Localization</em> is the act of making
programs behave in a region-specific way. When a program
formats numbers or dates in a way specific to your part of the
world, or prints messages (or accepts input) in your native
language, the program is said to
be <em class="firstterm">localized</em>. This section describes
steps Subversion has made towards localization.</p><div class="sect2" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a id="svn.advanced.l10n.understanding"></a>Understanding locales</h3></div></div></div><p>Most modern operating systems have a notion of the
“<span class="quote">current locale</span>”—that is, the region or
country whose localization conventions are honored. These
conventions—typically chosen by some runtime
configuration mechanism on the computer—affect the way
in which programs present data to the user, as well as the way
in which they accept user input.</p><p>On most Unix-like systems, you can check the values of the
locale-related runtime configuration options by running the
<span class="command"><strong>locale</strong></span> command:</p><pre class="screen">
$ locale
LANG=
LC_COLLATE="C"
LC_CTYPE="C"
LC_MESSAGES="C"
LC_MONETARY="C"
LC_NUMERIC="C"
LC_TIME="C"
LC_ALL="C"
</pre><p>The output is a list of locale-related environment
variables and their current values. In this example, the
variables are all set to the default <code class="literal">C</code>
locale, but users can set these variables to specific
country/language code combinations. For example, if one were
to set the <code class="literal">LC_TIME</code> variable to
<code class="literal">fr_CA</code>, then programs would know to present
time and date information formatted according a
French-speaking Canadian's expectations. And if one were to
set the <code class="literal">LC_MESSAGES</code> variable to
<code class="literal">zh_TW</code>, then programs would know to present
human-readable messages in Traditional Chinese. Setting the
<code class="literal">LC_ALL</code> variable has the effect of changing
every locale variable to the same value. The value of
<code class="literal">LANG</code> is used as a default value for any
locale variable that is unset. To see the list of available
locales on a Unix system, run the command <span class="command"><strong>locale
-a</strong></span>.</p><p>On Windows, locale configuration is done via the
“<span class="quote">Regional and Language Options</span>” control panel
item. There you can view and select the values of individual
settings from the available locales, and even customize (at a
sickening level of detail) several of the display formatting
conventions.</p></div><div class="sect2" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a id="svn.advanced.l10n.svnuse"></a>Subversion's use of locales</h3></div></div></div><p>The Subversion client, <span class="command"><strong>svn</strong></span>, honors the
current locale configuration in two ways. First, it notices
the value of the <code class="literal">LC_MESSAGES</code> variable and
attempts to print all messages in the specified language. For
example:</p><pre class="screen">
$ export LC_MESSAGES=de_DE
$ svn help cat
cat: Gibt den Inhalt der angegebenen Dateien oder URLs aus.
Aufruf: cat ZIEL[@REV]...
…
</pre><p>This behavior works identically on both Unix and Windows
systems. Note, though, that while your operating system might
have support for a certain locale, the Subversion client still
may not be able to speak the particular language. In order to
produce localized messages, human volunteers must provide
translations for each language. The translations are written
using the GNU gettext package, which results in translation
modules that end with the <code class="filename">.mo</code> filename
extension. For example, the German translation file is named
<code class="filename">de.mo</code>. These translation files are
installed somewhere on your system. On Unix, they typically
live in <code class="filename">/usr/share/locale/</code>, while
on Windows they're often found in the
<code class="filename">\share\locale\</code> folder in Subversion's
installation area. Once installed, a module is named after
the program it provides translations for. For example, the
<code class="filename">de.mo</code> file may ultimately end up
installed as
<code class="filename">/usr/share/locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/subversion.mo</code>.
By browsing the installed <code class="filename">.mo</code> files, you
can see which languages the Subversion client is able to
speak.</p><p>The second way in which the locale is honored involves how
<span class="command"><strong>svn</strong></span> interprets your input. The repository
stores all paths, filenames, and log messages in Unicode,
encoded as UTF-8. In that sense, the repository is
<em class="firstterm">internationalized</em>—that is, the
repository is ready to accept input in any human language.
This means, however, that the Subversion client is responsible
for sending only UTF-8 filenames and log messages into the
repository. In order to do this, it must convert the data
from the native locale into UTF-8.</p><p>For example, suppose you create a file named
<code class="filename">caffè.txt</code>, and then when committing the
file, you write the log message as “<span class="quote">Adesso il caffè è
più forte</span>”. Both the filename and log message contain
non-ASCII characters, but because your locale is set to
<code class="literal">it_IT</code>, the Subversion client knows to
interpret them as Italian. It uses an Italian character set
to convert the data to UTF-8 before sending them off to the
repository.</p><p>Note that while the repository demands UTF-8 filenames and
log messages, it <span class="emphasis"><em>does not</em></span> pay attention
to file contents. Subversion treats file contents as opaque
strings of bytes, and neither client nor server makes an
attempt to understand the character set or encoding of the
contents.</p><div class="sidebar"><p class="title"><b>Character set conversion errors</b></p><p>While using Subversion, you might get hit with an error
related to character set conversions:</p><pre class="screen">
svn: Can't convert string from native encoding to 'UTF-8':
…
svn: Can't convert string from 'UTF-8' to native encoding:
…
</pre><p>Errors like this typically occur when the Subversion
client has received a UTF-8 string from the repository, but
not all of the characters in that string can be represented
using the encoding of the current locale. For example, if
your locale is <code class="literal">en_US</code> but a collaborator
has committed a Japanese filename, you're likely to see this
error when you receive the file during an <span class="command"><strong>svn
update</strong></span>.</p><p>The solution is either to set your locale to something
which <span class="emphasis"><em>can</em></span> represent the incoming UTF-8
data, or to change the filename or log message in the
repository. (And don't forget to slap your collaborator's
hand—projects should decide on common languages ahead of
time, so that all participants are using the same
locale.)</p></div></div></div><div class="navfooter"><hr /><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="svn.advanced.confarea.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="svn.customization.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="svn.advanced.externaldifftools.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">Runtime Configuration Area </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> Using External Differencing and Merge Tools</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
