GNU bug report logs - #27505
LC_CTYPE affects tutorial language

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From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Leonard Lausen <leonard <at> lausen.nl>
Cc: 27505 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#27505: acknowledged by developer (Re: bug#27505: LC_CTYPE affects tutorial language)
Date: Sat, 05 Aug 2017 10:06:48 +0300

> From: Leonard Lausen <leonard <at> lausen.nl>
> Date: Sat, 5 Aug 2017 10:54:37 +0900
> 
> Please reopen this bug.

Continuing the discussions doesn't require reopening the bug, as long
as we don't intend to make any changes for it.

> In that case though I believe the intended emacs behavior does not make
> sense. Given that I need to set LC_CTYPE=zh_CN.UTF-8 just to make it
> possible to use input system input methods for Chinese characters
> doesn't mean I want to actually use a Chinese language interface.
> 
> Or concretely, I am learning Chinese and am comfortable typing it or
> having daily conversations, however I don't feel comfortable reading the
> emacs manual in Chinese. For my language learning I also tend to keep
> some notes in Chinese which I would like to edit with emacs.
> 
> Shouldn't there be a way to allow people to input Chinese (or other
> non-European languages) without affecting the language environment? The
> current behavior seems to discriminate language learners

Yes, there should be such a way, and in fact it is already, and always
was, implemented in Emacs.  The values of LC_CTYPE etc. environment
variables are only used to set up the _defaults_; users can use
commands and options to override those defaults in many ways.  For
example, "C-h t" can be invoked with a numeric argument ("C-u C-h t")
in which case Emacs will ask you in what language to display the
tutorial.  As another example, input method of your choosing can be
invoked at any moment with "C-u C-\"; then you can switch it back off
as soon as you've finished typing characters that are not directly
accessible from your system keyboard.  Finally, the language
environment of your choosing can be set with "C-x RET l", and doing
that will set many other defaults according to the language
environment you select.

Given all these facilities, I'm not sure I understand what exactly is
your problem.  The original report was about the tutorial language,
but you never explained why did you set LC_CTYPE to the value that
specified Chinese.  If you did that for some reason other than for
using Chinese in your programs, then perhaps you shouldn't set
LC_CTYPE, and instead should use the above-mentioned, more focused,
Emacs features to specify Chinese where you want it?

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