Re: gettext locale environment variable documentation

[Bruno Haible]

Hello Karl,

> How about also documenting the "@modifier"
> string that can apparently be tacked on to locale names?  I couldn't
> easily find anything definitive about it.  The setlocale man page on my
> system says:
> 
>        A locale name is typically of the form
>        address@hidden, where ...
> 
> but doesn't define "modifier", as far as I can see.

Can someone explain what this @modifier syntax is actually used for,
in today's systems? What I know is not enough to be documented:

  - It can denote a variant with different monetary unit.
    Example: address@hidden

  - It can denote the script of a locale.
    Example: 'address@hidden' for Serbian written with the Latin script (in the
    'sr' locale, it is written in the Cyrillic script). GNU gettext even
    comes with a converter from sr to address@hidden

  - It can denote the orthography of a locale.
    Example: address@hidden (see the thread at
    http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/ietf-languages/2007-April/thread.html).
    Or 'address@hidden', which means "English with quotation marks". (I made 
this
    up myself.)

  - It can (could?) also denote an X11 input method, at least 10 years ago.
    Who can tell how input methods are chosen nowadays under KDE and GNOME,
    and how this relates to the LANG environment variable?

Bruno